The Secret History of the Rape Kit
A True Crime Story
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4.2 • 20 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Marty Goddard dreamed up a new crime-solving tool—a kit that could help rape survivors fight for justice. This thrilling investigation tells the story of the troubled, heroic woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.
"Astonishing . . . Marty Goddard takes her rightful place as a visionary thanks to Kennedy’s relentless investigation.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises
"The Secret History of the Rape Kit is stunning: part thriller, part feminist reclamation, part personal journey, fully a page-turner. How did we not know about Marty Goddard?"—Peggy Orenstein author of Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex
In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool—the rape kit—and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work.
When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This fascinating true story shines light on the woman who upended the way that sexual assault cases were handled by police. Author Pagan Kennedy recounts the life of Marty Goddard, a woman who tussled with Chicago police over their failure to collect evidence of rapes and child abuse in the ’70s—until she took matters into her own hands and created the rape kit. A phenomenally thorough storyteller, Kennedy goes beyond just the kit’s invention, highlighting Goddard’s inspirational work as an advocate for runaway assault survivors, as well as her desire to fade into obscurity so that she was never really credited for her work. Kennedy adds a personal touch by thoughtfully weaving her own experiences with sexual assault into the story, discussing her teen years in the ’70s, when girls and women were routinely blamed for the violence against them. If you’re drawn to stories of unsung heroes from history, The Secret History of the Rape Kit is a must-read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
