The Secret History of the Rape Kit

Starred review from October 14, 2024
Journalist Kennedy (Inventology) offers an exhilarating biography of Martha “Marty” Goddard (1941–2015), the inventor of the rape kit, whose contributions were downplayed in the historical record until Kennedy resurfaced her story for a 2020 New York Times Magazine article. Working at a nonprofit in 1970s Chicago, Goddard threw herself into fighting for the rights of rape victims, pushing and pestering local detectives and nurses into explaining to her why it was so difficult to prosecute rapists. Discovering a lack of standardization in how physical evidence was collected, she landed upon the idea of a box, or kit, that contained every tool needed to collect and preserve evidence of a rape. She sold the Chicago police department on the idea, though the head of the CPD’s crime analytics lab, Louis Vitullo, after making some final adjustments to the contents of the box, insisted the kit be named after him. By 1979 the kits had become widely used in Illinois. After Justice Department officials heard Goddard speak at a conference, the federal government briefly funded her ongoing activist work advocating for their use. However, Goddard’s subsequent career consisted of low-paid nonprofit work supporting women victims of sexual violence, and she died in poverty and obscurity. Part historical detective story and part vivid character study of a pioneering feminist, this is a page-turner.

November 1, 2024
Kennedy's (Inventology, 2016) important reclaiming of the history of the medical forensic examination tool known as the rape kit is equal parts triumphant and devastating. In early 1970s Chicago, a white woman named Marty Goddard realized many ""runaways"" were actually individuals escaping sexual violence at home. She wanted to change rape from an unprovable crime against people who were rarely believed to an evidence-based crime that would lead to convictions. She conceptualized the rape kit--before a Chicago forensics officer (who first berated Goddard) developed her concept himself, took the credit, and trademarked it in his name. The irony is lost on exactly no one. Goddard nonetheless drove cultural change surrounding rape in hospitals, at conventions, and in police stations in cities across the country. Eventually, Goddard disappeared into obscurity and alcoholism. Significantly, Kennedy works to capture the compounded challenges Black women experience regarding rape culture. Readers will encounter multiple descriptions of sexual violence, including a section called ""ungaslighting"" in which Kennedy re-examines her own past.

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December 1, 2024

Who came up with the idea of a rape kit, and how was it first implemented? These are the questions that journalist Kennedy (coauthor, An Immense New Power To Heal) set out to investigate, and the answers took her on a journey she did not anticipate. In this book, she tells the story of Marty Goddard, a Chicago activist who in the 1970s helped develop the first kit used to collect evidence of sexual assault. Seeking to establish a new standard of evidence collection, Goddard allowed a police investigator to put his name on her invention. That resulted in Goddard being forgotten by history, despite her tireless efforts in distributing the kit and training medical staff and law enforcement on how to properly use it. VERDICT Kennedy's efforts to find out what happened to Goddard after she faded from public life uncover not only personal details but also an in-depth history of the treatment of women survivors of sexual assault and other crimes. Readers with an interest in police procedure or true crime will find this book fascinating.--Jennifer Moore

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2024
The story behind a critical forensic innovation. Award-winning journalist Kennedy, molested twice as a child, grew up in the 1970s and '80s and was taught to be fearful of predators, who seemed to be everywhere. She learned, too, that victims had little recourse for justice; too often authorities accused them of lying--until the invention of the rape kit. Coming into widespread use in the late 1970s, it allowed for the collection of useful evidence and altered police and hospital protocol. Its very existence seemed unlikely: "How," she wondered, "does a tool that empowers women ever get built in a man's world?" That question led Kennedy to discover Martha "Marty" Goddard, a worker at a crisis center for teenagers in Chicago who found that many of the runaways had escaped sexual violence in their homes. Yet their traumas went ignored: Goddard was shocked that sexual assault evidence was sloppily collected at hospitals and handed off to police departments eager to dismiss the cases. With dogged determination, Goddard lobbied politicians for change, becoming a citizen adviser on the city's Rape Task Force and sharing her idea for a rape kit with Chicago police. To get their attention, though, she had to let a man take credit: the kits came to be attributed to police sergeant Louis Vitullo. In the mid-1970s, Goddard founded the Citizens Committee for Victims Assistance, got funding to put together standardized kits, and delivered them to 25 Chicago hospitals. In addition, she ran training sessions for medical personnel and police, changing the culture around the treatment of victims. In 1984, the Justice Department hired her to travel around the country to promote the use of rape kits. But suddenly, in 1988, Goddard disappeared. Kennedy's tenacious sleuthing reveals a surprising portrait of a defiant, troubled, and mysterious woman. Absorbing detective work.

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