Ramsey County leaders recommit to improving sexual assault response and adding resources

Ramsey County leaders on Wednesday say they have recommitted to efforts to improve response to sexual assaults and provide victims with a variety appropriate, dedicated services from initial response to investigation and prosecution.

County Attorney John Choi led the press conference in downtown St. Paul, where officials both reaffirmed past commitments and announced some new ones such as culturally responsive and trauma-informed training for crime investigators, prosecutors and victim advocates.

“We know that we have racial disparities in the victimization of many crimes, including sexual assault, but we also know that if we’re not attuned to different communities and their needs, we’re not doing what we need to do around improving the quality of justice and safety for everybody,” Choi said.

Some of the other new commitments include investing in retaining designated investigators trained in sex assault investigations and involving victim advocates “early and consistently” through the investigation process.

Choi was joined at the announcement by police chiefs for a variety of Ramsey County cities, public health officials and community advocates.

The event was also a chance for officials to see how far the county’s sex assault response has come in the past decade.

Ramsey County had a 39% charging rate in 2018 for criminal sexual conduct cases, according to data provided Wednesday by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office. That same year, The Star Tribune released an investigative series that looked at more than 1,000 sexual assault cases in Minnesota from 2015 to 2016.

It found that 74% were never forwarded to prosecutors — resulting in no arrests and no convictions of the alleged assailants. Only 7% of all the reports made to police resulted in a conviction.

Shortly after, in 2019, Ramsey County officials signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which promoted an interagency, victim-centered response when sexual assaults were reported.

Ramsey County’s charging rate has gone up each year since, and reached 64% in 2024, according to data provided by the County Attorney’s Office.

Choi applauded the work over the years by agencies serving on the county’s Sexual Assault Response Collaboration, but he also reiterated that sexual assault response requires continuous improvement.

A more recent collaboration was with the nonprofit Minnesota Justice Resource Center, which Choi’s office hired to conduct an independent research project in 2023.

Kayla Richards, the community impact director for the nonprofit, explained that they worked to build trust and hear from women who are Black, Indigenous or other people of color who survived sexual assault. This was crucial to seeing where Ramsey County had blind spots and could improve, she said.

The study found that “trust, power dynamics, and identity” all impacted their experiences of reporting their assault, according to Richards. The nonprofit recommended a variety of changes to improve response, such as increasing funding to the county’s SOS Sexual Violence Services program and improving “communication and consistency and compassion across the entire system.”

Along with the commitments, Choi announced that there would be $40,000 dedicated to go toward culturally specific trainings for the next two years.