Effort to test more than 1,100 untested rape kits yields first indictment in Bristol County

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A man arrested in a 2010 rape case in New Bedford will remain behind bars.

Scot Trudeau, 47, of Worcester, was recently indicted on charges of aggravated rape and assault and battery. He was ordered held without bail on Tuesday pending a dangerousness hearing.

The Bristol County District Attorney’s office said the indictment is the first under its Untested Rape Kit Initiative, an effort to test 1,148 previously untested rape kits in that county alone. The program is supported by a federal grant and will send the kits to a private lab for testing.

Prosecutors say Trudeau and another man attacked a 23-year-old woman on March 18, 2010. The woman was hit the head and dragged to a secluded area in New Bedford, where the man held her down while Trudeau raped her, according to the district attorney.

The woman’s rape kit, submitted after the attack, was not tested until February of this year. It was matched to a DNA sample provided by Trudeau in 2015 after his federal conviction for child sexual exploitation.

“I am extremely pleased that our rape kit testing initiative has already resulted in indictments against this defendant for a cold case violent sexual assault committed more than a decade ago in New Bedford,” Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn said in a statement. This case demonstrates the importance of fully testing all sexual assault kits. If we did not obtain the grant to have all these kits fully tested, this case never would have been solved and the statute of limitations would have expired.”

“Victims who have been sexually assaulted have gone through a very traumatic experience and have a right to have these kits fully tested, especially when an assailant cannot be identified,” he continued.

In August, Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a bill requiring rape kits in the State Police Crime Lab to be tested within 180 days after it was discovered thousands had gone untested.

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