How a visionary victims advocate took developed the first rape kits

In the early 1970s, rape had reached epidemic proportions in Chicago, with an estimated 16,000 people were sexually assaulted in the metropolitan area.But less than a tenth of the cases were ever reported to the police and few of the perpetrators were ever apprehended. Moreover, the Chicago Police Department’s training manual had a dim view of the victims themselves. “Many rape complaints are not legitimate,” the manual declared.

“It is unfortunate that many women will claim they have been raped in order to get revenge against an unfaithful lover or boyfriend with a roving eye.”In essence, the police considered females who claimed sexual assault to be either liars or prostitutes.Enter Martha “Marty” Goddard, a 30-something visionary disturbed that sexual predators were escaping justice for their crimes.A divorcée with close cropped blonde hair and owlish glasses who used the moniker Marty because she liked hiding behind a man’s name, Goddard would go on to create what is known today as the first standardized rape kit. It included proper forensic tools — swabs, vials, combs to collect hair and fiber, glass slides for microscope study, sterile nail clippers, bags for the victim’s clothing, instructions for gathering evidence, envelopes to protect the evidence, along with cards informing victims where to seek counseling and medical services — and forms for the doctors and police officers handling each case.Goddard’s inspirational story, one that would have a shockingly tragic ending, is compellingly detailed for the first time in journalist Pagan Kennedy’s page-turner about the woman who ignited a feminist revolution in forensics.“Goddard would go on to lead a campaign to treat sexual assault as a crime rather than as a feminine delusion,” writes Kennedy in “The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story (Vintage).

“The kit is one of the most powerful tools ever invented to bring criminals to justice.”“Sexual-assault ...