Mariska Hargitay has helped cops investigate more than 11,000 sex assault cases...

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...and track down 22 serial rapists

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11:33 EDT 15 Aug 2024, updated 11:40 EDT 15 Aug 2024 By Natasha Anderson

Law & Order: SUV star Mariska Hargitay has helped authorities investigate more than 11,000 sex assault cases, it has emerged.

Hargitay, 60, is known for her portrayal of Captain Olivia Benson, a detective with the New York Police Department's fictional Special Victims Unit, on the hit TV show.

Throughout the program, Benson and her team work to investigate extremely sensitive and heinous crimes, often involving sexual assault or harassments.

The actress has now helped investigators in Michigan identify 22 'serial rapists' by funding prosecutor Kym Worthy's mission to process 11,000 untested rape kits that had been sitting in a police evidence room, The Today Show reported.

It comes after Hargitay earlier this year revealed how she had been raped by a friend when she was in her 30s. She said she 'minimized' the rape over the years before coming to a point of 'reckoning'.

Mariska Hargitay, pictured filming Law & Order: SUV on August 5, has helped authorities investigate more than 11,000 sex assault cases

She helped investigators in Wayne County, Michigan identify 22 'serial rapists' by funding prosecutor Kym Worthy's (pictured in 2015) mission to process 11,000 untested rape kits that had been sitting in a police evidence room

When Hargitay learned of the staggering backlog of untested rape kits in Wayne County, she 'made it her mission to get all of them tested'.

Through her Joyful Heart Foundation - which Hargitay founded in 2004 to support the healing of survivors and alter society's response to sexual assault - she launched the End the Backlog program.

The program aims to end 'injustice' by working to 'identify jurisdictions with rape kit backlogs' and assist with 'developing and implementing survivor-centered reforms'.

The charity helped Wayne County raise enough money to test 11,000 kits, which journalist Andrea Canning says has had a 'ripple effect across the country'.

'It's making changes everywhere — for police departments, for prosecutors' offices,' Canning told the Today Show.

'So hats off to Kym Worthy…. She deserves the biggest pat on the back for this. Thousands of cases were solved. They found 22 serial rapists among these kits.'

Earlier this year The Law & Order: SVU actress, shared for the first time details of the terrifying assault she suffered decades ago in a heartbreaking first-person essay for People.

She wrote: 'A man raped me in my thirties. It wasn't sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control. He was a friend. Then he wasn't.

'I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn't want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent.

The star said she went into 'freeze mode' after the assault as she couldn't process what had happened.

She said: 'So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative. I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive.

Hargitay founded the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004, which aims to support the healing of survivors and alter society's response to sexual assault - and said the foundation enabled her to begin healing.

She wrote: 'I think I also needed to see what healing could look like. I look back on speeches where I said, 'I'm not a survivor,'' she writes.

'I wasn't being untruthful; it wasn't how I thought of myself.'

Hargitay said she 'minimized' the rape over the years before she had a 'reckoning and realization: 'My husband Peter (Hermann) remembers me saying, "I mean, it wasn't rape." Then things started shifting in me, and I began talking about it more in earnest with those closest to me.'

She said she now wants 'an acknowledgment and an apology' from her attacker, writing: 'As for justice, it's important to know that it may look different for each survivor. For me, I want an acknowledgment and an apology. "I'm sorry for what I did to you. I raped you. I am without excuse."

'This is a painful part of my story. The experience was horrible. But it doesn't come close to defining me, in the same way that no other single part of my story defines me.