NEW YORK — By February 2017, Maisha Sudbeck had made peace with the idea she would never get justice. It had been five years since she was raped in Tucson, Arizona, by a man she had met online. Police had brushed the case off as a he-said-she-said standoff. For years, her rape evidence kit had sat untested. With two children and a new marriage, she had moved on with her life.

Then a detective knocked on her door.

The detective said a grant from the Manhattan district attorney’s office had helped the Tucson authorities clear a backlog of untested rape kits, which preserve the DNA evidence left by an attacker. After five years, Sudbeck’s kit had finally been tested, the detective said. And police had found a match in a database of people with criminal records: a man named Nathan Loebe.

“My chapter was reopened,” Sudbeck said. “Having my kit finally tested was a catalyst for hope.”

In February, Loebe was convicted of sexually assaulting seven women. Sudbeck testified against him at trial.

Sudbeck’s case is one of thousands that have gotten a second look from investigators since the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., committed $38 million in forfeiture money to help other jurisdictions test rape kits. Since the grants began being distributed in 2015, the evidence kits have led to 165 prosecutions in cases that were all but forgotten. So far, 64 of those have resulted in convictions.

Rarely have public dollars from a local prosecutor’s office been so directly tied to results with such national implications. The initiative has paid to get about 55,000 rape kits tested in 32 law enforcement agencies in 20 states, among them the police departments in Las Vegas; Philadelphia; Miami; Memphis, Tennessee; Austin, Texas; and Kansas City, Missouri.

Nearly half produced DNA matches strong enough to be added to the FBI’s nationwide database of genetic profiles. About 9,200 of those matched with DNA profiles in the system, providing new leads and potential evidence.

States across the country, meanwhile, have passed legislation to address the problem of untested rape kits. The Justice Department followed suit and started its own initiative, committing more than $150 million to continue the effort.

Vance announced the initiative in 2015, after a flood of critical stories that revealed tens of thousands of rape kits across the country were sitting untested, sometimes for decades.

Using money seized from international banks in New York that were accused of violating sanctions, Vance dedicated $38 million in grants to other law enforcement agencies to clear those backlogs. (New York City had already cleared its backlog a decade earlier.) Vice President Joe Biden announced a parallel federal program the same day.

Though the money was invested outside New York, it has helped close several cold cases in the city. “We have solved New York cases with kits tested from Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” Vance said.

The cases reopened and solved because of the grants include serial rapists who, for decades, preyed on women while the evidence that could have stopped them languished on shelves.

In Memphis, police exhumed the body of Robert Brasher, a hardened criminal from Missouri who had killed himself to avoid capture, and tied him to eight sexual assaults in three states, including three that ended in slayings. The key to solving those cases was an untested rape kit from a 14-year-old girl attacked in 1997 that was found to match Brasher’s DNA profile.

In Georgia, evidence collected in 2003 from a woman who was raped at gunpoint in a park was finally tested and led police to Dandre Shabazz, who has since been linked to 14 sexual assaults committed between 2001 and 2005. Shabazz, who was already in prison for robbery, was charged with rape in April in Fulton County.

Another grant to the Las Vegas police helped solve the rape and murder of Nadia Iverson, whose body was found in May 1997 at a construction site. Her rape kit was not tested until March 2016. Last year, Arthur Sewall, 51, a former police officer, was arrested and charged with her murder after authorities said his DNA was found to match her attacker’s.

Still, even with such successes, the problem of untested rape kits persists. Advocates for rape victims estimate that about 250,000 kits remain untested across the country.

At a news conference Tuesday, victims whose cases had been solved with the help of grants from the Manhattan district attorney recalled how the local police had dismissed their claims or questioned whether their encounter was consensual.

The persistent backlog of rape kits in many jurisdictions has prompted criticism from advocates for rape victims over how those police departments treat rape cases, at a moment when the country is facing a moment of reckoning about sexual assault after the #MeToo movement.

“I believe fundamentally there was a gender bias at issue,” Vance said Tuesday, when asked about the backlog. “A crime mostly involving women was simply not viewed as important to solve.”

New York authorities have not been immune to that criticism. For years, the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Division, which investigates sex crimes, has been understaffed and accused of not taking the claims of victims seriously.

A scathing 2018 report from the city’s Department of Investigation said the division was resource-starved and did not adequately investigate incidents of date-rape. In a major shake-up, the unit’s former chief, who had clashed with top brass over the division’s lack of resources, was ousted from his post in November.

The city has seen a spike in reported rapes, a trend that police, advocates and prosecutors attribute to the #MeToo movement encouraging more women to come forward. The Police Department has responded to the criticism by adding 55 detectives to the division and naming a chief who is a woman to lead it.

“They believe they’re doing everything they can,” Vance said of the Police Department.

Law enforcement agencies that received grants will continue reporting results to the district attorney’s office through September. Vance said he expects the number of convictions and arrests helped by the grants to rise.

“They are nowhere near done,” Vance said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.