Introducing Untested

May 6, 2025·40 min·3 clips

Emily Zabalos sits in a police interrogation room, forced to relive her rape accusation while the detective questions her credibility.

Emily Zabalos is called back to the station. The detective on her Georgia case asks her to describe the night she accused Marshawn Curtis of rape. The room is bare and windowless. On the recording, Emily shifts in her chair, clears her throat, plays with her hair, and keeps trying to answer questions that clearly hurt to answer. The narration does not hurry away from that. It stays with the interview, then opens into what can happen when a sexual assault survivor seeks help and evidence collection. Dr. Julie Valentine is the main expert voice. She explains that sexual assault medical forensic exams center the patient's health and healing. Control matters. Kristin Williams describes nurses offering choices because assault has already taken away a person's autonomy. The exam can take a long time. With permission, nurses look for injuries, take photographs, and collect evidence with swabs from areas the patient chooses. They also offer medication to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, plus mental health and housing resources. The episode keeps the details careful rather than graphic. Dr. Valentine says these exams usually last three to four hours, sometimes longer. That makes an untested kit feel different. It is not a box on a shelf. It is physical, emotional, and evidentiary work, tied to grants meant to address untested rape kits. The credits point listeners to more reporting after a story that begins with one recorded interview and ends at a much larger problem.

As heard by us

A recorded stationhouse interview opens into the larger machinery behind untested rape kits.

This episode centers Emily Zabalos's rape allegation and the stationhouse follow-up that arrives a month later. Its best stretch is the audio-video interview, where a detective pushes for a minute-by-minute account and Emily tries to answer in real time, with the pressure of the…

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If you want a recorded stationhouse interview that opens into an untested rape-kit story, start here.

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