May 27, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, Pagan Kennedy, author of "The Secret History of the Rape Kit," reveals the untold story behind the rape kit, a forensic tool that revolutionized sexual assault investigations but whose creator, Marty Goddard, was erased from history. Through meticulous research, Kennedy uncovered how Goddard developed this life-changing evidence collection system in 1970s Chicago while facing systemic barriers and police attitudes that dismissed victims.
When Kennedy began researching the origins of the rape kit, she expected a straightforward story. What she discovered instead was a buried history of female innovation deliberately erased from public record. In 1970s Chicago, Marty Goddard encountered a system where police manuals explicitly stated "most women who report rapes are lying" and evidence collection was an afterthought. Determined to create change, Goddard developed a standardized system for collecting sexual assault evidence that would give credibility to survivors' accounts through science.
Kennedy's research exposes concerning modern issues as well. Despite DNA testing revolutionizing forensics, rape kits remain largely unchanged since the 1970s. With over 1,000 different versions nationwide, inconsistent protocols, invasive questioning, and accessibility barriers continue to plague the system. Perhaps most troubling is the persistent devaluation of sexual assault evidence, evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of untested kits discovered in warehouses nationwide.
The most revealing aspect of this history is Goddard's strategic decision to name the kit after police chief Louis Vitullo, knowing that in the male-dominated world of law enforcement, a woman's invention would never be adopted. This sacrifice ensured implementation but cost Goddard her rightful place in history until Kennedy's journalism brought her contributions to light. Now housed in the Smithsonian, the original rape kit represents both a breakthrough and a reminder of how women's contributions are often obscured.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that thiscontent may be difficult and
have listed specific contentwarnings in each episode
description to help create apositive, safe experience for
all listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes
are reported every year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutesthere is a murder.
Every five minutes there is arape.
Every two to five minutes thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:43):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of
us it's none of our business andI am proud to stand here today
with each of you to call thatperpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullin.
The conversation surroundingthe origins of the rape kit is a
culminating topic followingWomen's History Month and Sexual
Assault Awareness Month, andthat we are often reminded of
how, historically, rape in andof itself was not taken
seriously by authorities,minimized by a community,
(01:15):
couched in victim blaming, orconsidered too convoluted to
prosecute.
Furthermore, marital rape,specifically, was only legally
recognized as an illegal act aslate as 1993.
When the devastating issue ofrape and all of its implications
is discussed, it helps to bringthe importance of the rape kit
into focus.
Ideally, one may think that wewould be talking to forensic
(01:37):
nurses, sexual assaultinvestigators or crisis center
advocates about rape kits, andrightfully so.
Or crisis center advocatesabout rape kits, and rightfully
so.
However, our guest today, arenowned author, researcher and
professor, brings a uniquejournalistic perspective to this
concept.
There is an old adage thatstates we can't know where we
are going if we don't know wherewe've been.
(01:58):
As someone who has championedthe cause to take a deeper dive
into not only what is but why itis, and spotlights how
something as monumental assexual assault evidence
collection not only changed thelandscape of investigations, but
also shifted a paradigm andtransformed a culture.
My guest is Pegyn Kennedy, theauthor of 12 books, most
(02:20):
recently the Secret History ofthe Rape Kid.
Her journalism has appeared inthe New Yorker, the Atlantic and
dozens of other publications.
She has been a columnist forthe New York Times Magazine and
a contributing writer for theNew York Times Sunday Review.
Her awards include a KnightScience Journalism Fellowship at
MIT, an NEA Fellowship, aSmithsonian Fellowship and two
(02:44):
Massachusetts Cultural Councilfellowships.
She joins the show today todiscuss her work, the Secret
History of the Rape Kit.
Peggy, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Thanks for being here and alsofor your incredible journalism
surrounding the development andevolution of the Rape Kit, a
sexual assault evidencecollection system that
(03:06):
revolutionized sexual assaultinvestigations and brought
justice to countless victims ofrape and sexual assault.
Before we dive into the book,could you give us an idea of
what led you to conducting deepinvestigational journalism,
because you seem to have apenchant for learning about the
origins of so many things, notjust the rape kit.
(03:27):
So what led you to this?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
work.
So actually that takes me backto like 2012, when I was hired
to be the who made that guy, asI called it, for the New York
Times Magazine.
So they had this column wherethey would have an enormous
(03:49):
picture of an ordinary objectand then my job was to track
down the person who originatedthe idea, and I had to do this
every week.
So I got very fast at trackingpeople down, learned a lot about
the patent system crash coursein how things get invented.
(04:09):
It was an amazing opportunitybecause week after week, I
either investigated a storysometimes the inventor was no
longer around but often I foundthese pretty obscure people who
had come up with ideas that areincredibly familiar to us now,
and so their object, whateverthey invented, was really famous
(04:30):
, but they were sort of livingin obscurity and sometimes, you
know, it took a long time toeven figure out who that person
was.
So I learned, you know, thatreally changed.
Then I went on to write a bookcalled Inventology.
Because that experience ofdoing that for two years I came
(04:51):
away kind of seeing a lot ofpatterns of how new ideas come
into the world and kind of thesecret sauce of invention, which
actually there's a couple ofdifferent secret sauces.
There's no one.
There's a couple of patterns Inoticed that were really
interesting, and one of them, Iwould say one of the chief
(05:11):
patterns that I noticed is Imean, we might just call it,
necessity is the mother ofinvention, but people with skin
in the game are enormouslyinventive, like people who are
at the front end of a problem,and so then I got really
interested in what?
Because so few women have hadthe chance to be inventors?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
because, well, I could go into all the reasons
why.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
You know there were a lot of reasons and that's a
whole other story of why womendidn't have the power or the
resources to be able to designand invent.
But I became really interestedin the question of like, when
women do have the power to seethings you know, through the
framework of the problems thatyou know come to you that live
(06:00):
with in a female body, whatkinds of things do you design
and invent?
What kind of world do youimagine, what kind of problems
do you want to solve and how doyou think about them?
And so I was really looking at,kind of looking at like, what
were the things that areinvented or designed really from
(06:21):
a woman's point of view?
And I was kind of looking atthe objects of the world and
seeing very few things.
So you know, so many things aredeeply embedded with, I would
say, not just a male point ofview, but almost a sexual
predator's point of view.
(06:41):
I mean, just look at socialmedia, you know where you could
easily put brakes on things thatwould prevent, you know,
stalking or exploitation ofvulnerable people, but there's
no.
That would get in the way ofprofit, so that doesn't happen.
So, anyway, at some point in2018, my attention landed on the
(07:03):
rape kit, and that was themoment when there were a lot of
headlines I'm going to sort ofpost Me Too, or the Me Too
movement was happening and therewere a lot of headlines about
the rape kit because there hadbeen a huge scandal that the
kits had been backlogged, thatthere were nearly half a million
kits, that there were nearlyhalf a million kits that this is
(07:27):
, kits containing potentiallyDNA evidence of a sexual assault
crime had been either just leftin warehouses, thrown away,
trashed like literally you couldsee pictures of aisles of kits
covered in mold and like birdshit.
You know, you know, and so itwas very clear how little regard
(07:51):
that this evidence was giveninside of many police
departments and so there was anenormous outcry about that.
But the question that reallyinterested me as I thought about
it was well, how did the rapekid even come to exist?
Because in this world of things, where you know, generally male
(08:13):
controlled design and invention, how did something that was
created to supplement asurvivor's story and potentially
even prove her story andpotentially put a powerful man
in you know, get a powerful manin trouble?
How did that happen?
And so that's what I started.
(08:37):
I pulled that thread and thencrazy things happened, because
it just turned out to be a muchwilder story than I had ever
imagined.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah Well, your story is also an odyssey from what
you described just now, and it'sall sounds incredibly
fascinating, just solving thatpuzzle week after week.
It's kind of like rewiring yourbrain to think in a much
different way.
And what's likewise fascinatingis that you did all of this
before AI.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Oh, I mean I don't think AI would have helped me.
I mean I'm writing another bookand not using AI.
I mean most of the-.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
No, I was thinking about AI to recognize images and
kind of help determine whatthey are and maybe where they
came from.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, I don't actually find that very useful
because a lot of the research.
I mean AI tends to pick up themost believed story about
something.
You know the kind of coverstory that would be printed a
lot and more recent.
(09:46):
There's very little.
You know pre-2010 or something,because you know it's scraping
all this modern stuff.
But you know that's the verything it's like when you dig
into a story and really gothrough archives, newspaper
archives and archives you knowof materials that aren't even on
(10:10):
the internet.
You just find the story is notas it has been told.
Very over and over again Ifound that you know.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I mean you know the.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The story like the.
When I was writing who madethat column?
I could have said who made thetennis ball hopper or the you
know, I don't know.
There's a lot of you know orthe initial or the sugar cube or
whatever, because it requiredcalling up a lot of people,
(10:46):
dealing with a lot of murkyinformation and eventually doing
a lot of human stuff to figureout what was really true.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, I appreciate that context.
Just to have people understandhow powerful it is when you
really do dig into a topic andimmerse yourself in it and the
results can be fascinating.
And you have done just that,and you could have stuck with
researching and writing aboutthe origins of things,
especially those that may bemore benign or safe, but instead
(11:19):
you gravitated towards theheavier topic of rape.
So let's talk about what ledyou to research and write about
the origins of the rape kit, anddid you receive any pushback
doing so?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, in the beginning I was actually at that
time by this time I was workingfor the another section of the
New York Times, the SundayReview, and it was a wonderful,
wonderful gig where they let mehave a lot of freedom and tell a
lot of weird stories.
But as I began pulling thisthread, it didn't seem like an
(11:59):
article because there was somuch you know, as I began
interviewing people and findingsome of the people who were
there at the time and the storyturned out, and this is an
example of like why.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
AI why.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It's why real journalism by humans is so
important.
Because at the time, like whenI looked it up on Wikipedia,
everything much of what was onWikipedia would turn out to be
completely wrong, wow, or orjust a very much an
oversimplification either wrongor just oversimplified.
(12:33):
And you know, as I beganactually digging into it, it was
like so much more emerged andyeah there.
So in the beginning I just myeditor at the Times, who's
wonderful was on maternity leaveand so I was sort of I knew I
owed her some story pitches, butI sort of took this time to
(12:57):
kind of hide and just I just letmyself go and begin researching
and writing notes and somethinghappened Suddenly.
I had like 80 pages and I hadall these interviews and I still
wasn't done, you know.
And so when she came back frommaternity leave, you know, I
(13:18):
said I've just dropped down thisrabbit hole and I have all this
material.
It's not going to work for youbecause it's way too long and
complicated.
And she said, oh well, actuallyI've been made the editor.
They were going to do a newversion of the Sunday review,
that where they would allowreally long stories, and so I
(13:40):
just lucked out that didn't lastfor very long.
So she, I just said, well, letme send you everything I have.
So, not, I did not get pushedback at all, it was she.
She was brilliant.
She kind of boiled it all downinto 10,000 words and we went
from there.
And you know, having it'sreally amazing to work with an
(14:03):
organization like the New YorkTimes because you have fact
checkers and editors and anamazing art department.
They made all these amazingimages.
So originally I published it in2020 as a very long article and
then just so much more keptcoming out.
In fact, because I had thearticle, more people contacted
(14:24):
me who knew about this story.
It just kept going you know.
So it just kind of evolved intoa book.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, and it's a long and interesting story.
So just for a bit of contextfor our listeners who may be new
to the term rape kit, can youexplain the distinction between
a sexual assault exam and a rapekit and how, why and how the
rape kit is so crucial to thatexam?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
So well that actually brings us into the story,
because you know at thebeginning so and the story
begins and it's very much abouta woman named Martha Goddard or
Marty Goddard, and in the early1970s if somebody was assaulted,
(15:08):
there was really an attitude.
They did have a procedure.
They would often send you Imean often people would be
hurting, it might be a violentattack so they'd be sent to the
hospital and the doctors andnurses there would try their
(15:29):
best to collect evidence, butthey hadn't been trained, there
was no kind of formal way ofdoing this, and so then they'd
send a bag of stuff like clothesor they'd try to click slides
or whatever.
So the way it looked in 1970was that, you know, the victim
would go into the hospital often, but it was a tremendously
(15:54):
harrowing even more so thantoday process for the victim,
because the police were justterrible I mean, there's no
other way to say it At the time.
They might bring the victim inand yell out we've got a rape
for you.
And then the person would betaken into an exam room and the
(16:17):
nurses and doctors were orientedtowards just taking care of
that person if they had beenstabbed or hurt or they needed
antibiotics or whatever theyneeded, and then they would.
It was like an afterthought tocollect the evidence.
They would just bag up whateverthey found and put it in and
send it to the crime lab.
And then the crime lab getsthis bag.
Nobody's trained the medicalworkers about how to collect
(16:41):
evidence, so they just get thisbag and they're like, okay, this
is useless, and they throw itaway.
But I mean, even moreproblematic was really the
attitude inside policedepartments of that time.
Literally there were.
The handbook said most womenwho report rapes are lying, or
(17:03):
many of them, and so it's yourjob to determine if she's lying.
She probably is, and if she islying you don't need to go any
further.
So in essence, it made thepolice officer the judge and
jury before evidence was evencollected.
So that's obviously not anevidence-based evidence system
(17:24):
If you decide right away who youthink is guilty, and if you
think that they are, you knowpure or a virgin or they.
You know they're aquote-unquote slut, you know.
And so when Marty Goddard camealong, she worked for a
nonprofit organization.
(17:45):
Marty Goddard came along, shewas a worked for a nonprofit
organization.
She was had kind of stumbledacross this problem because she
had volunteered at a hotline forkids who lived on the street.
Kind of this is the height ofthe hippie era.
So there were a lot of kids, youknow, living on the streets
running away from home, thestreets running away from home,
(18:07):
and she discovered talking tothese kids like they weren't
running away to join the circus,you know, or have fun.
They were many times runningaway from family members who
were abusing them and sherealized there was this
widespread problem and so thatkind of led her to try to work,
to ask why there's all thesepredators around, why aren't we
(18:31):
catching them?
Why aren't we even aware ofthem?
Why isn't there evidence?
Surely we can prove this.
You know, the attitude was it'salways a, he said, she said
it's not provable.
(18:55):
So she, with the help of manyother great, amazing anti-rape
activists, began to push againstthe police departments and she
was appointed to be on a rapetask force in Chicago and that
gave her to investigate this andthat gave her the power to go
into the crime lab to talk tothe nurses, to talk to the
police officers, to begin to tryto understand, like, where is
(19:16):
the failure point?
Where what's going wrong?
Why are we not even getting anyevidence?
Far from actually the you knowlike again, when I began doing
this, like Wikipedia would havesaid, or everybody would have
said, that Louis Fetullo, whowas a police chief in Chicago,
was the inventor of the firstrape kit.
(19:38):
But in fact there actually wererape kits around at that time.
It was kind of like, locally,different cities were trying to,
because they were all seeingthis problem.
They were trying to sort oforganize, you know, bridge the
gap between the hospitals andthe crime labs, and it would
(19:58):
guide what the nurses did and itwould be like a common language
between the hospitals and thecrime labs and the police
officers.
Everybody's going to do thesame thing.
It's going to be systematizedand even define what evidence is
.
So those kind of existed, butin a very small way, but they
(20:22):
were very.
They were often really badlydesigned, I mean horribly
designed, like there was one Ifound out about where it it said
um, the instructions to thepolice officer were um, if you
think that the victim is afreelance prostitute, then you
(20:43):
don't need to collect theevidence.
You know it was just like fullof the kind of hateful language.
And so it was.
You know there was nothingmagical about the idea of a kit
Like it could be very bad.
But Marty Goddard, actually shedid work with Louis Vitulo in
the police department.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
They worked together but it was very much.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
She was very much the instigator and guider of this
whole project and she wanted touse, she wanted to design a kit,
not just to kind of create, getbetter evidence and create an
idea that everybody would be onthe same page and we're going to
define what actually theevidence is and what works.
(21:26):
But she realized that when thecases went to trial, you know
the victims weren't believed.
Cases went to trial, you knowthe victims weren't believed.
So if you had this scientifickit and a person in a white lab
coat standing up there saying,okay, this is what we tested, we
do it this exact way, then welook at this and this and this
(21:47):
and we get the slides, you knowthat's much more worked.
That was it was sort of atheater prop as well for the
trial, so that was veryimportant as well.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
So I mean because prior to DNA evidence there was
very little to go on right.
There was fingerprinting andblood typing for other types of
crimes, but there wasn't any DNAevidence until sometime in the
late 20th century.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yes, correct, so they developed they actually when
they were developing these firstkits.
You could get blood, you couldget HLA type, you could get a
few things, but you're notreally going to narrow it down a
huge amount with somebody'sblood type, obviously.
So they would depend heavily onphotographs and this is why the
(22:43):
exam would be important to alsodocument any violence that had
been done to the victim's body,things like that.
And then, like you said, youknow, dna fingerprinting was
invented in the 80s and itreally came into use in the 90s.
At that point you already haveall these thousands of kits that
(23:06):
have been collected.
They've taken swabs off of thevictim's body without knowing
you know that one day theseswabs are going to be so much
more meaningful because by thenineties you can test them and
give a type to the DNA and thencompare that to the suspect's
blood type and you can reallyrule out people and rule in
(23:28):
people.
You can say this has to be theperson whose you know blood is
in this kit, say, or this isn'tthe person.
And being able to rule outpeople was also very, very
important.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, and it's been an evolution.
I think this has been a longprocess of trying to establish
some standardized procedures,actually having those executed
and then eventually tested,which was a roadblock there for
a while that you mentionedearlier in this conversation.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhat this kit is called, because
(24:03):
I've heard it called severalthings the rape kit, the sexual
assault, forensic evidencecollection kit.
Did it start out as beingcalled a rape kit or something
else, or do you feel like thatterm really is appropriate for
what this is?
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Well, the interesting thing is, it actually started
out being called the Vitulo kitafter Louis.
Vitulo who was given credit asthe inventor.
And you know that's a big partof the story I told, because
what I discovered lookingthrough the documents and trade
was that actually Marty Goddardhad trademarked the kit under
(24:45):
his name and I interviewed andreached out to a lot of people
to talk about why that hadhappened.
And of course we can't say forsure but it seems pretty clear
that in the 1970s if you weredealing with the Chicago police
department and Chicago politics,which were very corrupt and you
know it was very difficult tomake change then and as now.
(25:11):
And so she, I think you knowpeople have told me, and it
seems like a reasonableassumption, that she realized
that if she named this kit afterwell known guys in the you know
leaders in the crime lab ofthat time and he had, you know,
(25:31):
he had helped with the prototypeand he'd helped with some of it
, um and and been you know, he'dbeen on board with it then that
would really give it theimprimatur of a male inventor,
right and um of the policedepartment and give you know
(25:51):
everything would go.
She wanted it to work, shewanted, wanted it to happen and
she was the kind of person whowas willing to do what it took
to, you know, make this work.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, it's, it's actually genius, right Cause, to
your point, if, if she hadnamed it after herself or
actually use the word rape, wemay not be having this
conversation today about her orthe kit that she actually
invented.
So a huge part of successfulvictim advocacy is to first
believe the victim, and youmentioned several times now that
(26:27):
it was always up to lawenforcement back in the 70s to
decide if they believed thevictim's story or not and then
rule in, rule out whether or notthis was going to be
investigated.
And yet many people, includinglaw enforcement and
investigators, they wantsomething tangible before they
can accept a person's claim.
(26:47):
So how did something thatactually collected evidence,
like the rape kit, impact policedepartments and labs around the
world once the rape kit wasinitially finalized and released
?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, that's kind of a long story because you know
there have been all these youknow with.
DNA coming in to DNAfingerprinting coming into use.
You know, it really evolved inthis kind of weird backwards
fashion where they already hadthe kits.
You know, one of the big ideasthat Marnie Goddard had was that
(27:22):
being able to file evidence wasthe right of every survivor.
So even if she, you know, youcould go first to the hospital
yourself and ideally everyhospital would be able to give
you would have a nurse there,and by the 1980s there was
(27:46):
trained, for there were trainedforensic nurses.
So in theory anybody would beable to go to the hospital and
get this forensic exam by aprofessional who was trained
also in trauma care.
So they would be, they wouldnot be disrespectful to you,
they would work with you and youcould file this, both
(28:11):
biological evidence.
You could file this, bothbiological evidence, and then
the nurse would also take thestory, you know, record the
story and you would go throughthis process that could take up
to five hours.
It was incredibly thorough.
Yes, and so you know we'vealways fallen short of this idea
(28:32):
that we can provide this toeverybody everywhere, but that
was the idea.
And then those kits would besent on to the police department
and then you could.
You know also, laws vary stateby state, but in a lot of states
you could decide not to reportthe rape, just to file the
(28:53):
evidence, and then you coulddecide whether you wanted to
actually go forward from there.
The police, you know.
Unfortunately, you know, oftenthe police would really
discourage people or or stillnot treat them well.
But you did have all thisevidence that was banked.
(29:14):
But in the nineties, when, youknow, I looked back over the
news, I think we became aware ofthis problem of kits not being
tested, you know, prettyrecently, but that problem
started as soon as there wastesting, because in the nineties
it was very expensive to doeven one DNA test on a kit and
(29:39):
so you had these backlogsalready starting to pile up
everywhere in the country andnow it was already becoming a
problem.
Yeah, which just?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
points to the fact that these were so necessary.
Right, because there was justrampant sexual abuse or sexual
assault and rape of women acrossthe country and there's still a
huge epidemic.
But this was a critical turningpoint in investigating or
potentially investigating thosetypes of crimes and apprehending
(30:13):
perpetrators.
Now I'm curious about thereplication of the kit because
with something as groundbreakingas a sexual evidence collection
kit, was there an increasedinterest from pharmaceutical
companies to replicate the kit?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Well, actually, I mean, nobody's making a lot of
money off of rape kits.
You know what's weird is thatand this is something I really
dig into the book the originalkit.
So there's also no one rape kit.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
There's thousands of them.
Oh, different, there'sdifferent types.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Oh yeah, and that's part of the problem.
Oh yeah, and that's part of theproblem.
There's probably more than athousand kits in the United
States, all with different ruleslike of what you're supposed to
collect and how the examproceeds.
Even in one city there could bethree different kits.
Oh my OK.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, it's not good, it's not ideal.
It does not sound verystandardized, as I thought.
Perhaps it was no no.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
So what happened was in the early in the 70s, when
Marty Goddard and Vitula wereworking on this.
You know.
She really conceived of a kitthat would be very simple and
she was part of the greatexpense.
She also had to raise all themoney to make this happen.
She was part of the greatexpense, she also had to raise
all the money to make thishappen.
And it was expensive, notbecause of the kits themselves
(31:37):
so much as the fact that you hadto train the nurses and you had
to train the crime lab workersand the police officers.
You had to raise awareness andyou had to get the staff, get it
into the hospitals and justlike all the stuff that's not
even in the kit was a lot ofwork and a lot of expense.
(31:58):
And so it was a very simplelike.
If you look at the original one, there's about a checklist of
about 10 things you're supposedto collect and then a victim
statement and that's about it.
It's very simple and it'sreally designed so that somebody
with a bit of training can doit.
It's very clear cut.
(32:18):
And then you know, andcommittees started, state
committees started gettinginvolved and you know what
happens with committees.
More, the kit got a lot ofplaces.
It has hundreds of envelopesbecause in some bizarre, weird
circumstance you mightpotentially need to collect X or
(32:40):
Y kind of swab from this partof the body why kind of swab
from this part of the body?
And dense instructions and it'sbecome very much not
user-friendly.
But also, you know, the crimelabs themselves often,
unfortunately, have a lot ofpower to say what they want in
(33:02):
the kits and they may ask forthings that are not legal or
reasonable to have for them,like they may want to know what
medications the victim is onmedications they want to know
(33:27):
things that can.
They should just be testing theevidence without knowing
anything about the victim, rightTo have good evidence.
They often will want to see thevictim's statement.
They'll want, you know there'sbeen very little ability to stop
the, to kind of get control ofthat kind of information that
should not be known about.
(33:47):
The you know could be sealed inthe kit for trial.
The nurse is collecting it, butshe's a trauma informed person
who's you know working with thevictim.
But other people should not beseeing that, nor should they be.
They may ask for the entirehistory of the victim's sexual
(34:09):
life.
They may ask for all themedication she's on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
This is part of the rape kit collection process.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So it depends.
This is why it's reallyimportant to have the right kind
of design and have.
You know one thing I reallywanted to write the book people
just don't know about.
You know it's.
It's bizarre because findingout even what the kit looks like
in different States and what itis, it's so hard.
(34:38):
There's there even people whoare really, really who are
working with it, you know theydon't have the sense of like
what it looks like elsewhere,you know there's just no,
there's so little attentiongiven to this issue, and I think
that's also why, aside fromkind of getting more complicated
(35:00):
and messy, the kit is hasn'treally changed since the 1970s,
it's still on paper at a timewhen everything else has gone
digital.
And, you know, I don't know whatthe ideal solution is, but it
certainly seems like it would bebetter to have it work more
digitally, especially because somuch evidence now of assault is
(35:21):
actually digital.
And this is something I'vestarted to think about, kind of
post after the book, afterwriting the book, you know.
Uh, I think that we just soit's so baked into us to think
about the evidences of assaultas being DNA but DNA.
(35:43):
And that being DNA but DNA isamazing what it can do in terms
of telling us who was there andwho wasn't there, but it can't
tell us about their intentions.
But, like it or not, everymoment of our lives is now
tracked digitally and so many ofour interactions with people
(36:04):
are in text or they're recordedsomehow.
So when you get digitalevidence, you can start to see
intention, not only who wasthere, but what their intention
was, or if there was, a threatwas made, if violence occurred
(36:45):
no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, and it also could be a game changer in
making sure that the informationcollected in rape kits no
longer sits and gets moldy on ashelf, because it'll have a
digital footprint and it cannotgo away.
So as long as the informationis tested and then stored
digitally, it shouldn'tdisappear.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Oh well, they do store the DNA.
So when the DNA is tested it isconverted into a digital code
Great.
And then that digital code andthis has been going since the
90s that digital code then goesto a central database at the FBI
called CODIS, and then theadvantage of that is that you
(37:33):
could have, if there were thesame perpetrator was going state
to state.
You can see that pattern.
Once you put together all theinformation you know in CODIS,
you could have one kit and thenit shows a hit to like three
other kits in different states.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
And that's very powerful.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, so many scientists now are worried about
the destruction of data, aboutclimate change.
We haven't really had adiscussion about the threat to
the potential destruction ofsexual assault data, but that is
something we should talk about.
You know that.
You know so much of this.
What I've been writing about Ifeel like nobody's talking about
(38:15):
and I'm kind of looking, youknow, suddenly come across
something and think, well, thatcould be a big problem, like why
aren't, aren't we, we should,but of course, there's so much
going on right now, it's it'sreally hard.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, there's a lot of complexities and confusion,
and I'm glad you brought up someof the issues around what's
happening with theadministration currently in 2025
, because that brings us to thetopic of women's rights and,
within the feminist or pro-womanspace, sexual assault exams and
rape kits are likely to beconsidered a no-brainer, a great
(38:51):
way to support female victims,but also as a way to stand up
for females by daring to bringevidence into question.
So how does feminism or thewomen's rights movement help to
justify things like rape kits,often in spaces that are still
male dominated, like hospitals,police departments and
government offices?
Speaker 3 (39:12):
You know.
So I think there's some levelof just fighting back against
norms, the kit itself.
You know, I'm really fascinatedby the way the designed world
shapes our norms.
So, you know, we all see atraffic light and we stop, you
know, and having this sexualassault exam sends the message
(39:35):
that there is such a thing asevidence, sexual assault can be
proved, and you know that thevictims have a right to um,
accuse and seek justice, and Ithink that's becoming harder
right now.
Um, but um, yeah, I mean the,the way that we're fighting back
(40:03):
, you know.
I think, everybody's throwingeverything at the wall right now
to see what works.
I'm talking to a lot offorensic nurses who are just
heroes, who are trying tomaintain the system amidst huge
funding cuts and all kinds ofheadwinds and all kinds of
(40:29):
headwinds.
But at the same time, you know,I would be hopeful that we do
have these new technologies.
I would love to see and againI'm not prescribing anything
because I'm not the expert hereI would love to see a panel of
survivors and forensic nursesand lawyers and so all kinds of
experts come together to talkabout what the system should
(40:51):
look like.
Now.
Maybe we could use telemedicinemore to do these exams so that
people don't have to go tohospitals.
You know another, there is a lotof people who don't feel
comfortable going to an ER orwho are just too traumatized.
But I was writing this bookduring the pandemic and that the
(41:14):
the problem of basing somethinginside of a hospital became
really obvious because literallythe rape reporting had gone
down by 40% in some areas.
Because people couldn't getinto an ER, you couldn't go
there or it wasn't safe, and sowhat are you supposed to do?
And I was sort of shocked bythe lack of accommodations made
(41:39):
because the idea was somehow, ifyou tried a different system
where the victim didn't go tothe hospital or didn't go to one
of these places, um, thatsomehow they would cheat or lie
or, you know, fake it and Idon't even know how you fake
like, I'm not even sure whatthey're afraid of when they talk
(42:03):
about.
you know that the chain ofevidence or the chain of custody
needs to be established becauseyou know to prevent, to make
sure the evidence is hasn't beenfalsified, because I mean, what
are they imagining?
Like somebody would stealsomebody's sperm and put it on
(42:24):
their bodies, like I'm not surewhat is the fear of fakery?
And even if that's the casewhich is crazy, you know even if
that crazy scenario wheresomebody manages to steal some
sperm, put it on their bodies,they can perfectly well go to a
hospital and sit in the ER.
(42:44):
So I you know there's a lot ofit that just doesn't seem
logical to me, but you know it's.
It's very hard to change asystem and I think a lot of
people inside of the system feellike it's so deeply under
attack that they don't want toraise questions like that, I
think you raise some veryinteresting ideas for discussion
(43:07):
or debate and I'm glad you wentso deep with this work and it
sounds like you continue tostudy it and follow what's
happening around.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
You know the rape kit collection and nursing and so
on to really give it somespecial attention.
Now your story about MartyGoddard and the origins of the
rape kit received nationalattention.
Do you believe that attentionhas moved the needle in the
sexual assault advocacy space or, if not, what is still missing?
Speaker 3 (43:44):
I hope.
I'm not sure if it's moved theneedle, but what I hope to do
was, first of all, I think thatyou know one thing I discovered
in talking to people while I wasworking on the book, and then
after events and everything, andthen even interviews, like
where the first question isoften what is a rape kit?
(44:05):
And then I go throughexplaining what it is.
Well, the fact that it's amillion things right now, but
also, you know exactly how theexam works and what it is and
what I realized is like, eventhough I think almost
everybody's familiar with theidea, unless you've engaged with
it in your own life, um, youhave no idea what exactly it is
(44:29):
or how it works or what yeah whywould you problems?
Are, why would you?
Why would you and it's somesort of like that familiar yet
invisible thing and I think justby trying to have you know by
the end of reading my book, youlike absolutely know what it is,
how it works, how it's supposedto work, what's going wrong.
(44:51):
You know, and I think, just Ithink, when something's kind of
invisible, it can be taken awaymore easily.
So my intention was just to makeit visible in a new way so that
people can see what it is.
And also, I really wanted tostart a conversation about how
do we make this better and howdo we get this out unstuck from
(45:13):
the 1970s, because there's somuch potential to do things
better today.
How do we do that?
You know how do we do that andI've, you know, encountered I've
just met so many interestingpeople while reporting this book
and then afterwards, and it'snot like my ideas have sharpened
(45:37):
, because I feel like everyperson I talk to kind of I learn
about a new problem or I learnabout a new solution.
People are trying, but how muchyou know how difficult it is.
And then you know, with theTrump administration coming in,
there's like a whole wealth ofnew problems.
I had a PowerPoint lecturewhere I kind of listed some of
(46:00):
the main problems and then, as Iwas updating it, you know, it's
like I can't even put in therest of them, because I just
kind of make people toodepressed.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, Like, like we both said, it's a very complex
situation.
It doesn't need to be, I think.
Going back to the origin storyof the rape kit, you explained
it so well how simple it wasintended to be and hopefully you
know to try to make it easy toimplement and reduce the impact
to victims who have to endurethat process.
(46:34):
And I love that you mentionedbringing visibility to this
issue because, amazingly, theoriginal rape kit is housed at
the Smithsonian.
What?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
did you think about when they decided to have it on
display for visitors to see andlearn about?
Well, I was.
I'm glad to say that I was alittle bit a part of that story,
because when I was reportingthe story for the New York Times
, I realized that I hadn'tactually seen the original kit.
I mean, there were no picturesof it.
There was, you know, just no.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
I can't believe it even existed that something like
that existed.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah, and so I actually was in touch with
obviously a lot of people whowere there at the beginning,
obviously a lot of people whowere there at the beginning, and
one of and so I would alwaysask them like, or even Marty
Goddard's nephew took care ofher, when you know I I mean he
had all her things.
I was like is there an originalrape kid in there?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
He couldn't find one you know so.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I was looking and looking and then finally I
talked to somebody who hadworked with Marty Goddard back
in the day, mary Dreiser, and Isaid, by chance, would you have
a rape kit?
And she was like, oh, I youknow.
There was this long, longtrauma where she thought it
might be.
She had a storage facility.
(47:59):
She went there, wasn't there,and then one day she like looked
in the back of her closet andshe found it.
Wow.
And then we were like superexcited because we could have
the New York Times photographercome and take pictures of it.
It had all the original stuffin it.
They laid it all out, they didthe pictures.
(48:19):
So those were like, as far as Iknow, the first real pictures
of the original kit.
And it's funny because it was.
It had this groovy, I mean itwas very official looking.
But it also did have a groovy1970s woman sort of.
Yeah, I, you know, on the cuton the it looked very 1970s,
(48:40):
yeah.
But um then, mary, you know Ihad, you know I think I wrote in
my article, you know I had adream that it would be displayed
in the Smithsonian as parts ofthe Smithsonian, contacted Mary
(49:06):
actually put the kit up forauction with Sotheby's.
I believe and then the two of,yeah, two branches of the
Smithsonian bid on it and theygot it sort of in a shared deal
and that's how it got to theSmithsonian.
And so then I befriended thecurators at the Smithsonian and,
(49:28):
as I was working on the book,they had resources about the
history of sexual assaultforensics that I didn't have.
They were very helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
That's remarkable.
I'm so glad that dreams do cometrue sometimes, right?
So Marty Goddard passed away 10years ago.
What do you think she would saynow, in 2025, as it relates to
rape kits, sexual assault,investigations and prosecutions?
Speaker 3 (49:54):
I think the young version of Marty, who was a.
She was a big kind of player inChicago, she really understood
politics.
She was a big kind of player inChicago, she really understood
politics.
She had a lot of power by 1981,and then she kind of flamed out
(50:19):
, doing her best to really lookinto, you know, all those hidden
problems now and trying toorganize people around making
this work again.
It's kind of a janky system.
You know that hasn't beenrethought and I part of the book
was I did reach out to thepeople I considered sort of the
(50:42):
the Marty Goddards of today,people who were really thinking
about how would we?
And there aren't many of them,unfortunately.
But I found some interestingpeople who had ideas about, you
know, how we could rethink thekit, make it more effective,
make it less burdensome on thesurvivors, burdensome on the
(51:10):
survivors, um.
So I talked to those people and, um, you know I don't have
again there's.
I think the answer has toreally come from.
I would like to see it reallycome from a survivor-led
initiative yeah um, you know,unfortunately there's too little
weight given to the survivorexperience.
There's so much asked ofsurvivors to go to an ER, wait
(51:35):
potentially eight hours, gothrough a very invasive exam
that can last five hours to gothrough what might be very
difficult interactions with thepolice.
You know that is a lot and alot of people don't have a car
to get to the hospital.
They don't have child care tobe out of pocket for 24 hours
(51:58):
doing this.
You know I mean this is notaccessible to a lot of people.
So for me that accessibilityproblem is really the big one.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, that's an incredible observation based on
a lot of work and dedicationfrom you.
We thank you for the work thatyou've done and that you're
doing, and for talking with metoday.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Thank you so much for those great questions.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe andfollow us on social media at
National CCAW.
The subject matter of this podcast will address
difficult topics multiple formsof violence, and identity-based
discrimination and harassment.
We acknowledge that thiscontent may be difficult and
have listed specific contentwarnings in each episode
description to help create apositive, safe experience for
all listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes
are reported every year.
That is one every second.
Out of that, every 24 minutesthere is a murder.
Every five minutes there is arape.
Every two to five minutes thereis a sexual assault.
Every nine seconds in thiscountry, a woman is assaulted by
someone who told her that heloved her, by someone who told
(00:43):
her it was her fault, by someonewho tries to tell the rest of
us it's none of our business andI am proud to stand here today
with each of you to call thatperpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women.
I'm Maria McMullin.
The conversation surroundingthe origins of the rape kit is a
culminating topic followingWomen's History Month and Sexual
Assault Awareness Month, andthat we are often reminded of
how, historically, rape in andof itself was not taken
seriously by authorities,minimized by a community,
(01:15):
couched in victim blaming, orconsidered too convoluted to
prosecute.
Furthermore, marital rape,specifically, was only legally
recognized as an illegal act aslate as 1993.
When the devastating issue ofrape and all of its implications
is discussed, it helps to bringthe importance of the rape kit
into focus.
Ideally, one may think that wewould be talking to forensic
(01:37):
nurses, sexual assaultinvestigators or crisis center
advocates about rape kits, andrightfully so.
Or crisis center advocatesabout rape kits, and rightfully
so.
However, our guest today, arenowned author, researcher and
professor, brings a uniquejournalistic perspective to this
concept.
There is an old adage thatstates we can't know where we
are going if we don't know wherewe've been.
(01:58):
As someone who has championedthe cause to take a deeper dive
into not only what is but why itis, and spotlights how
something as monumental assexual assault evidence
collection not only changed thelandscape of investigations, but
also shifted a paradigm andtransformed a culture.
My guest is Pegyn Kennedy, theauthor of 12 books, most
(02:20):
recently the Secret History ofthe Rape Kid.
Her journalism has appeared inthe New Yorker, the Atlantic and
dozens of other publications.
She has been a columnist forthe New York Times Magazine and
a contributing writer for theNew York Times Sunday Review.
Her awards include a KnightScience Journalism Fellowship at
MIT, an NEA Fellowship, aSmithsonian Fellowship and two
(02:44):
Massachusetts Cultural Councilfellowships.
She joins the show today todiscuss her work, the Secret
History of the Rape Kit.
Peggy, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Thanks for being here and alsofor your incredible journalism
surrounding the development andevolution of the Rape Kit, a
sexual assault evidencecollection system that
(03:06):
revolutionized sexual assaultinvestigations and brought
justice to countless victims ofrape and sexual assault.
Before we dive into the book,could you give us an idea of
what led you to conducting deepinvestigational journalism,
because you seem to have apenchant for learning about the
origins of so many things, notjust the rape kit.
(03:27):
So what led you to this?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
work.
So actually that takes me backto like 2012, when I was hired
to be the who made that guy, asI called it, for the New York
Times Magazine.
So they had this column wherethey would have an enormous
(03:49):
picture of an ordinary objectand then my job was to track
down the person who originatedthe idea, and I had to do this
every week.
So I got very fast at trackingpeople down, learned a lot about
the patent system crash coursein how things get invented.
(04:09):
It was an amazing opportunitybecause week after week, I
either investigated a storysometimes the inventor was no
longer around but often I foundthese pretty obscure people who
had come up with ideas that areincredibly familiar to us now,
and so their object, whateverthey invented, was really famous
(04:30):
, but they were sort of livingin obscurity and sometimes, you
know, it took a long time toeven figure out who that person
was.
So I learned, you know, thatreally changed.
Then I went on to write a bookcalled Inventology.
Because that experience ofdoing that for two years I came
(04:51):
away kind of seeing a lot ofpatterns of how new ideas come
into the world and kind of thesecret sauce of invention, which
actually there's a couple ofdifferent secret sauces.
There's no one.
There's a couple of patterns Inoticed that were really
interesting, and one of them, Iwould say one of the chief
(05:11):
patterns that I noticed is Imean, we might just call it,
necessity is the mother ofinvention, but people with skin
in the game are enormouslyinventive, like people who are
at the front end of a problem,and so then I got really
interested in what?
Because so few women have hadthe chance to be inventors?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
because, well, I could go into all the reasons
why.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
You know there were a lot of reasons and that's a
whole other story of why womendidn't have the power or the
resources to be able to designand invent.
But I became really interestedin the question of like, when
women do have the power to seethings you know, through the
framework of the problems thatyou know come to you that live
(06:00):
with in a female body, whatkinds of things do you design
and invent?
What kind of world do youimagine, what kind of problems
do you want to solve and how doyou think about them?
And so I was really looking at,kind of looking at like, what
were the things that areinvented or designed really from
(06:21):
a woman's point of view?
And I was kind of looking atthe objects of the world and
seeing very few things.
So you know, so many things aredeeply embedded with, I would
say, not just a male point ofview, but almost a sexual
predator's point of view.
(06:41):
I mean, just look at socialmedia, you know where you could
easily put brakes on things thatwould prevent, you know,
stalking or exploitation ofvulnerable people, but there's
no.
That would get in the way ofprofit, so that doesn't happen.
So, anyway, at some point in2018, my attention landed on the
(07:03):
rape kit, and that was themoment when there were a lot of
headlines I'm going to sort ofpost Me Too, or the Me Too
movement was happening and therewere a lot of headlines about
the rape kit because there hadbeen a huge scandal that the
kits had been backlogged, thatthere were nearly half a million
kits, that there were nearlyhalf a million kits that this is
(07:27):
, kits containing potentiallyDNA evidence of a sexual assault
crime had been either just leftin warehouses, thrown away,
trashed like literally you couldsee pictures of aisles of kits
covered in mold and like birdshit.
You know, you know, and so itwas very clear how little regard
(07:51):
that this evidence was giveninside of many police
departments and so there was anenormous outcry about that.
But the question that reallyinterested me as I thought about
it was well, how did the rapekid even come to exist?
Because in this world of things, where you know, generally male
(08:13):
controlled design and invention, how did something that was
created to supplement asurvivor's story and potentially
even prove her story andpotentially put a powerful man
in you know, get a powerful manin trouble?
How did that happen?
And so that's what I started.
(08:37):
I pulled that thread and thencrazy things happened, because
it just turned out to be a muchwilder story than I had ever
imagined.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah Well, your story is also an odyssey from what
you described just now, and it'sall sounds incredibly
fascinating, just solving thatpuzzle week after week.
It's kind of like rewiring yourbrain to think in a much
different way.
And what's likewise fascinatingis that you did all of this
before AI.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Oh, I mean I don't think AI would have helped me.
I mean I'm writing another bookand not using AI.
I mean most of the-.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
No, I was thinking about AI to recognize images and
kind of help determine whatthey are and maybe where they
came from.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, I don't actually find that very useful
because a lot of the research.
I mean AI tends to pick up themost believed story about
something.
You know the kind of coverstory that would be printed a
lot and more recent.
(09:46):
There's very little.
You know pre-2010 or something,because you know it's scraping
all this modern stuff.
But you know that's the verything it's like when you dig
into a story and really gothrough archives, newspaper
archives and archives you knowof materials that aren't even on
(10:10):
the internet.
You just find the story is notas it has been told.
Very over and over again Ifound that you know.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I mean you know the.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
The story like the.
When I was writing who madethat column?
I could have said who made thetennis ball hopper or the you
know, I don't know.
There's a lot of you know orthe initial or the sugar cube or
whatever, because it requiredcalling up a lot of people,
(10:46):
dealing with a lot of murkyinformation and eventually doing
a lot of human stuff to figureout what was really true.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, I appreciate that context.
Just to have people understandhow powerful it is when you
really do dig into a topic andimmerse yourself in it and the
results can be fascinating.
And you have done just that,and you could have stuck with
researching and writing aboutthe origins of things,
especially those that may bemore benign or safe, but instead
(11:19):
you gravitated towards theheavier topic of rape.
So let's talk about what ledyou to research and write about
the origins of the rape kit, anddid you receive any pushback
doing so?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, in the beginning I was actually at that
time by this time I was workingfor the another section of the
New York Times, the SundayReview, and it was a wonderful,
wonderful gig where they let mehave a lot of freedom and tell a
lot of weird stories.
But as I began pulling thisthread, it didn't seem like an
(11:59):
article because there was somuch you know, as I began
interviewing people and findingsome of the people who were
there at the time and the storyturned out, and this is an
example of like why.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
AI why.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
It's why real journalism by humans is so
important.
Because at the time, like whenI looked it up on Wikipedia,
everything much of what was onWikipedia would turn out to be
completely wrong, wow, or orjust a very much an
oversimplification either wrongor just oversimplified.
(12:33):
And you know, as I beganactually digging into it, it was
like so much more emerged andyeah there.
So in the beginning I just myeditor at the Times, who's
wonderful was on maternity leaveand so I was sort of I knew I
owed her some story pitches, butI sort of took this time to
(12:57):
kind of hide and just I just letmyself go and begin researching
and writing notes and somethinghappened Suddenly.
I had like 80 pages and I hadall these interviews and I still
wasn't done, you know.
And so when she came back frommaternity leave, you know, I
(13:18):
said I've just dropped down thisrabbit hole and I have all this
material.
It's not going to work for youbecause it's way too long and
complicated.
And she said, oh well, actuallyI've been made the editor.
They were going to do a newversion of the Sunday review,
that where they would allowreally long stories, and so I
(13:40):
just lucked out that didn't lastfor very long.
So she, I just said, well, letme send you everything I have.
So, not, I did not get pushedback at all, it was she.
She was brilliant.
She kind of boiled it all downinto 10,000 words and we went
from there.
And you know, having it'sreally amazing to work with an
(14:03):
organization like the New YorkTimes because you have fact
checkers and editors and anamazing art department.
They made all these amazingimages.
So originally I published it in2020 as a very long article and
then just so much more keptcoming out.
In fact, because I had thearticle, more people contacted
(14:24):
me who knew about this story.
It just kept going you know.
So it just kind of evolved intoa book.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, and it's a long and interesting story.
So just for a bit of contextfor our listeners who may be new
to the term rape kit, can youexplain the distinction between
a sexual assault exam and a rapekit and how, why and how the
rape kit is so crucial to thatexam?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
So well that actually brings us into the story,
because you know at thebeginning so and the story
begins and it's very much abouta woman named Martha Goddard or
Marty Goddard, and in the early1970s if somebody was assaulted,
(15:08):
there was really an attitude.
They did have a procedure.
They would often send you Imean often people would be
hurting, it might be a violentattack so they'd be sent to the
hospital and the doctors andnurses there would try their
(15:29):
best to collect evidence, butthey hadn't been trained, there
was no kind of formal way ofdoing this, and so then they'd
send a bag of stuff like clothesor they'd try to click slides
or whatever.
So the way it looked in 1970was that, you know, the victim
would go into the hospital often, but it was a tremendously
(15:54):
harrowing even more so thantoday process for the victim,
because the police were justterrible I mean, there's no
other way to say it At the time.
They might bring the victim inand yell out we've got a rape
for you.
And then the person would betaken into an exam room and the
(16:17):
nurses and doctors were orientedtowards just taking care of
that person if they had beenstabbed or hurt or they needed
antibiotics or whatever theyneeded, and then they would.
It was like an afterthought tocollect the evidence.
They would just bag up whateverthey found and put it in and
send it to the crime lab.
And then the crime lab getsthis bag.
Nobody's trained the medicalworkers about how to collect
(16:41):
evidence, so they just get thisbag and they're like, okay, this
is useless, and they throw itaway.
But I mean, even moreproblematic was really the
attitude inside policedepartments of that time.
Literally there were.
The handbook said most womenwho report rapes are lying, or
(17:03):
many of them, and so it's yourjob to determine if she's lying.
She probably is, and if she islying you don't need to go any
further.
So in essence, it made thepolice officer the judge and
jury before evidence was evencollected.
So that's obviously not anevidence-based evidence system
(17:24):
If you decide right away who youthink is guilty, and if you
think that they are, you knowpure or a virgin or they.
You know they're aquote-unquote slut, you know.
And so when Marty Goddard camealong, she worked for a
nonprofit organization.
(17:45):
Marty Goddard came along, shewas a worked for a nonprofit
organization.
She was had kind of stumbledacross this problem because she
had volunteered at a hotline forkids who lived on the street.
Kind of this is the height ofthe hippie era.
So there were a lot of kids, youknow, living on the streets
running away from home, thestreets running away from home,
(18:07):
and she discovered talking tothese kids like they weren't
running away to join the circus,you know, or have fun.
They were many times runningaway from family members who
were abusing them and sherealized there was this
widespread problem and so thatkind of led her to try to work,
to ask why there's all thesepredators around, why aren't we
(18:31):
catching them?
Why aren't we even aware ofthem?
Why isn't there evidence?
Surely we can prove this.
You know, the attitude was it'salways a, he said, she said
it's not provable.
(18:55):
So she, with the help of manyother great, amazing anti-rape
activists, began to push againstthe police departments and she
was appointed to be on a rapetask force in Chicago and that
gave her to investigate this andthat gave her the power to go
into the crime lab to talk tothe nurses, to talk to the
police officers, to begin to tryto understand, like, where is
(19:16):
the failure point?
Where what's going wrong?
Why are we not even getting anyevidence?
Far from actually the you knowlike again, when I began doing
this, like Wikipedia would havesaid, or everybody would have
said, that Louis Fetullo, whowas a police chief in Chicago,
was the inventor of the firstrape kit.
(19:38):
But in fact there actually wererape kits around at that time.
It was kind of like, locally,different cities were trying to,
because they were all seeingthis problem.
They were trying to sort oforganize, you know, bridge the
gap between the hospitals andthe crime labs, and it would
(19:58):
guide what the nurses did and itwould be like a common language
between the hospitals and thecrime labs and the police
officers.
Everybody's going to do thesame thing.
It's going to be systematizedand even define what evidence is
.
So those kind of existed, butin a very small way, but they
(20:22):
were very.
They were often really badlydesigned, I mean horribly
designed, like there was one Ifound out about where it it said
um, the instructions to thepolice officer were um, if you
think that the victim is afreelance prostitute, then you
(20:43):
don't need to collect theevidence.
You know it was just like fullof the kind of hateful language.
And so it was.
You know there was nothingmagical about the idea of a kit
Like it could be very bad.
But Marty Goddard, actually shedid work with Louis Vitulo in
the police department.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
They worked together but it was very much.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
She was very much the instigator and guider of this
whole project and she wanted touse, she wanted to design a kit,
not just to kind of create, getbetter evidence and create an
idea that everybody would be onthe same page and we're going to
define what actually theevidence is and what works.
(21:26):
But she realized that when thecases went to trial, you know
the victims weren't believed.
Cases went to trial, you knowthe victims weren't believed.
So if you had this scientifickit and a person in a white lab
coat standing up there saying,okay, this is what we tested, we
do it this exact way, then welook at this and this and this
(21:47):
and we get the slides, you knowthat's much more worked.
That was it was sort of atheater prop as well for the
trial, so that was veryimportant as well.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
So I mean because prior to DNA evidence there was
very little to go on right.
There was fingerprinting andblood typing for other types of
crimes, but there wasn't any DNAevidence until sometime in the
late 20th century.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yes, correct, so they developed they actually when
they were developing these firstkits.
You could get blood, you couldget HLA type, you could get a
few things, but you're notreally going to narrow it down a
huge amount with somebody'sblood type, obviously.
So they would depend heavily onphotographs and this is why the
(22:43):
exam would be important to alsodocument any violence that had
been done to the victim's body,things like that.
And then, like you said, youknow, dna fingerprinting was
invented in the 80s and itreally came into use in the 90s.
At that point you already haveall these thousands of kits that
(23:06):
have been collected.
They've taken swabs off of thevictim's body without knowing
you know that one day theseswabs are going to be so much
more meaningful because by thenineties you can test them and
give a type to the DNA and thencompare that to the suspect's
blood type and you can reallyrule out people and rule in
(23:28):
people.
You can say this has to be theperson whose you know blood is
in this kit, say, or this isn'tthe person.
And being able to rule outpeople was also very, very
important.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, and it's been an evolution.
I think this has been a longprocess of trying to establish
some standardized procedures,actually having those executed
and then eventually tested,which was a roadblock there for
a while that you mentionedearlier in this conversation.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhat this kit is called, because
(24:03):
I've heard it called severalthings the rape kit, the sexual
assault, forensic evidencecollection kit.
Did it start out as beingcalled a rape kit or something
else, or do you feel like thatterm really is appropriate for
what this is?
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Well, the interesting thing is, it actually started
out being called the Vitulo kitafter Louis.
Vitulo who was given credit asthe inventor.
And you know that's a big partof the story I told, because
what I discovered lookingthrough the documents and trade
was that actually Marty Goddardhad trademarked the kit under
(24:45):
his name and I interviewed andreached out to a lot of people
to talk about why that hadhappened.
And of course we can't say forsure but it seems pretty clear
that in the 1970s if you weredealing with the Chicago police
department and Chicago politics,which were very corrupt and you
know it was very difficult tomake change then and as now.
(25:11):
And so she, I think you knowpeople have told me, and it
seems like a reasonableassumption, that she realized
that if she named this kit afterwell known guys in the you know
leaders in the crime lab ofthat time and he had, you know,
(25:31):
he had helped with the prototypeand he'd helped with some of it
, um and and been you know, he'dbeen on board with it then that
would really give it theimprimatur of a male inventor,
right and um of the policedepartment and give you know
(25:51):
everything would go.
She wanted it to work, shewanted, wanted it to happen and
she was the kind of person whowas willing to do what it took
to, you know, make this work.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, it's, it's actually genius, right Cause, to
your point, if, if she hadnamed it after herself or
actually use the word rape, wemay not be having this
conversation today about her orthe kit that she actually
invented.
So a huge part of successfulvictim advocacy is to first
believe the victim, and youmentioned several times now that
(26:27):
it was always up to lawenforcement back in the 70s to
decide if they believed thevictim's story or not and then
rule in, rule out whether or notthis was going to be
investigated.
And yet many people, includinglaw enforcement and
investigators, they wantsomething tangible before they
can accept a person's claim.
(26:47):
So how did something thatactually collected evidence,
like the rape kit, impact policedepartments and labs around the
world once the rape kit wasinitially finalized and released
?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Well, that's kind of a long story because you know
there have been all these youknow with.
DNA coming in to DNAfingerprinting coming into use.
You know, it really evolved inthis kind of weird backwards
fashion where they already hadthe kits.
You know, one of the big ideasthat Marnie Goddard had was that
(27:22):
being able to file evidence wasthe right of every survivor.
So even if she, you know, youcould go first to the hospital
yourself and ideally everyhospital would be able to give
you would have a nurse there,and by the 1980s there was
(27:46):
trained, for there were trainedforensic nurses.
So in theory anybody would beable to go to the hospital and
get this forensic exam by aprofessional who was trained
also in trauma care.
So they would be, they wouldnot be disrespectful to you,
they would work with you and youcould file this, both
(28:11):
biological evidence.
You could file this, bothbiological evidence, and then
the nurse would also take thestory, you know, record the
story and you would go throughthis process that could take up
to five hours.
It was incredibly thorough.
Yes, and so you know we'vealways fallen short of this idea
(28:32):
that we can provide this toeverybody everywhere, but that
was the idea.
And then those kits would besent on to the police department
and then you could.
You know also, laws vary stateby state, but in a lot of states
you could decide not to reportthe rape, just to file the
(28:53):
evidence, and then you coulddecide whether you wanted to
actually go forward from there.
The police, you know.
Unfortunately, you know, oftenthe police would really
discourage people or or stillnot treat them well.
But you did have all thisevidence that was banked.
(29:14):
But in the nineties, when, youknow, I looked back over the
news, I think we became aware ofthis problem of kits not being
tested, you know, prettyrecently, but that problem
started as soon as there wastesting, because in the nineties
it was very expensive to doeven one DNA test on a kit and
(29:39):
so you had these backlogsalready starting to pile up
everywhere in the country andnow it was already becoming a
problem.
Yeah, which just?
Speaker 1 (29:50):
points to the fact that these were so necessary.
Right, because there was justrampant sexual abuse or sexual
assault and rape of women acrossthe country and there's still a
huge epidemic.
But this was a critical turningpoint in investigating or
potentially investigating thosetypes of crimes and apprehending
(30:13):
perpetrators.
Now I'm curious about thereplication of the kit because
with something as groundbreakingas a sexual evidence collection
kit, was there an increasedinterest from pharmaceutical
companies to replicate the kit?
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Well, actually, I mean, nobody's making a lot of
money off of rape kits.
You know what's weird is thatand this is something I really
dig into the book the originalkit.
So there's also no one rape kit.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
There's thousands of them.
Oh, different, there'sdifferent types.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Oh yeah, and that's part of the problem.
Oh yeah, and that's part of theproblem.
There's probably more than athousand kits in the United
States, all with different ruleslike of what you're supposed to
collect and how the examproceeds.
Even in one city there could bethree different kits.
Oh my OK.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, it's not good, it's not ideal.
It does not sound verystandardized, as I thought.
Perhaps it was no no.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
So what happened was in the early in the 70s, when
Marty Goddard and Vitula wereworking on this.
You know.
She really conceived of a kitthat would be very simple and
she was part of the greatexpense.
She also had to raise all themoney to make this happen.
She was part of the greatexpense, she also had to raise
all the money to make thishappen.
And it was expensive, notbecause of the kits themselves
(31:37):
so much as the fact that you hadto train the nurses and you had
to train the crime lab workersand the police officers.
You had to raise awareness andyou had to get the staff, get it
into the hospitals and justlike all the stuff that's not
even in the kit was a lot ofwork and a lot of expense.
(31:58):
And so it was a very simplelike.
If you look at the original one, there's about a checklist of
about 10 things you're supposedto collect and then a victim
statement and that's about it.
It's very simple and it'sreally designed so that somebody
with a bit of training can doit.
It's very clear cut.
(32:18):
And then you know, andcommittees started, state
committees started gettinginvolved and you know what
happens with committees.
More, the kit got a lot ofplaces.
It has hundreds of envelopesbecause in some bizarre, weird
circumstance you mightpotentially need to collect X or
(32:40):
Y kind of swab from this partof the body why kind of swab
from this part of the body?
And dense instructions and it'sbecome very much not
user-friendly.
But also, you know, the crimelabs themselves often,
unfortunately, have a lot ofpower to say what they want in
(33:02):
the kits and they may ask forthings that are not legal or
reasonable to have for them,like they may want to know what
medications the victim is onmedications they want to know
(33:27):
things that can.
They should just be testing theevidence without knowing
anything about the victim, rightTo have good evidence.
They often will want to see thevictim's statement.
They'll want, you know there'sbeen very little ability to stop
the, to kind of get control ofthat kind of information that
should not be known about.
(33:47):
The you know could be sealed inthe kit for trial.
The nurse is collecting it, butshe's a trauma informed person
who's you know working with thevictim.
But other people should not beseeing that, nor should they be.
They may ask for the entirehistory of the victim's sexual
(34:09):
life.
They may ask for all themedication she's on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
This is part of the rape kit collection process.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So it depends.
This is why it's reallyimportant to have the right kind
of design and have.
You know one thing I reallywanted to write the book people
just don't know about.
You know it's.
It's bizarre because findingout even what the kit looks like
in different States and what itis, it's so hard.
(34:38):
There's there even people whoare really, really who are
working with it, you know theydon't have the sense of like
what it looks like elsewhere,you know there's just no,
there's so little attentiongiven to this issue, and I think
that's also why, aside fromkind of getting more complicated
(35:00):
and messy, the kit is hasn'treally changed since the 1970s,
it's still on paper at a timewhen everything else has gone
digital.
And, you know, I don't know whatthe ideal solution is, but it
certainly seems like it would bebetter to have it work more
digitally, especially because somuch evidence now of assault is
(35:21):
actually digital.
And this is something I'vestarted to think about, kind of
post after the book, afterwriting the book, you know.
Uh, I think that we just soit's so baked into us to think
about the evidences of assaultas being DNA but DNA.
(35:43):
And that being DNA but DNA isamazing what it can do in terms
of telling us who was there andwho wasn't there, but it can't
tell us about their intentions.
But, like it or not, everymoment of our lives is now
tracked digitally and so many ofour interactions with people
(36:04):
are in text or they're recordedsomehow.
So when you get digitalevidence, you can start to see
intention, not only who wasthere, but what their intention
was, or if there was, a threatwas made, if violence occurred
(36:45):
no-transcript.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, and it also could be a game changer in
making sure that the informationcollected in rape kits no
longer sits and gets moldy on ashelf, because it'll have a
digital footprint and it cannotgo away.
So as long as the informationis tested and then stored
digitally, it shouldn'tdisappear.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Oh well, they do store the DNA.
So when the DNA is tested it isconverted into a digital code
Great.
And then that digital code andthis has been going since the
90s that digital code then goesto a central database at the FBI
called CODIS, and then theadvantage of that is that you
(37:33):
could have, if there were thesame perpetrator was going state
to state.
You can see that pattern.
Once you put together all theinformation you know in CODIS,
you could have one kit and thenit shows a hit to like three
other kits in different states.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
And that's very powerful.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, so many scientists now are worried about
the destruction of data, aboutclimate change.
We haven't really had adiscussion about the threat to
the potential destruction ofsexual assault data, but that is
something we should talk about.
You know that.
You know so much of this.
What I've been writing about Ifeel like nobody's talking about
(38:15):
and I'm kind of looking, youknow, suddenly come across
something and think, well, thatcould be a big problem, like why
aren't, aren't we, we should,but of course, there's so much
going on right now, it's it'sreally hard.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah, there's a lot of complexities and confusion,
and I'm glad you brought up someof the issues around what's
happening with theadministration currently in 2025
, because that brings us to thetopic of women's rights and,
within the feminist or pro-womanspace, sexual assault exams and
rape kits are likely to beconsidered a no-brainer, a great
(38:51):
way to support female victims,but also as a way to stand up
for females by daring to bringevidence into question.
So how does feminism or thewomen's rights movement help to
justify things like rape kits,often in spaces that are still
male dominated, like hospitals,police departments and
government offices?
Speaker 3 (39:12):
You know.
So I think there's some levelof just fighting back against
norms, the kit itself.
You know, I'm really fascinatedby the way the designed world
shapes our norms.
So, you know, we all see atraffic light and we stop, you
know, and having this sexualassault exam sends the message
(39:35):
that there is such a thing asevidence, sexual assault can be
proved, and you know that thevictims have a right to um,
accuse and seek justice, and Ithink that's becoming harder
right now.
Um, but um, yeah, I mean the,the way that we're fighting back
(40:03):
, you know.
I think, everybody's throwingeverything at the wall right now
to see what works.
I'm talking to a lot offorensic nurses who are just
heroes, who are trying tomaintain the system amidst huge
funding cuts and all kinds ofheadwinds and all kinds of
(40:29):
headwinds.
But at the same time, you know,I would be hopeful that we do
have these new technologies.
I would love to see and againI'm not prescribing anything
because I'm not the expert hereI would love to see a panel of
survivors and forensic nursesand lawyers and so all kinds of
experts come together to talkabout what the system should
(40:51):
look like.
Now.
Maybe we could use telemedicinemore to do these exams so that
people don't have to go tohospitals.
You know another, there is a lotof people who don't feel
comfortable going to an ER orwho are just too traumatized.
But I was writing this bookduring the pandemic and that the
(41:14):
the problem of basing somethinginside of a hospital became
really obvious because literallythe rape reporting had gone
down by 40% in some areas.
Because people couldn't getinto an ER, you couldn't go
there or it wasn't safe, and sowhat are you supposed to do?
And I was sort of shocked bythe lack of accommodations made
(41:39):
because the idea was somehow, ifyou tried a different system
where the victim didn't go tothe hospital or didn't go to one
of these places, um, thatsomehow they would cheat or lie
or, you know, fake it and Idon't even know how you fake
like, I'm not even sure whatthey're afraid of when they talk
(42:03):
about.
you know that the chain ofevidence or the chain of custody
needs to be established becauseyou know to prevent, to make
sure the evidence is hasn't beenfalsified, because I mean, what
are they imagining?
Like somebody would stealsomebody's sperm and put it on
(42:24):
their bodies, like I'm not surewhat is the fear of fakery?
And even if that's the casewhich is crazy, you know even if
that crazy scenario wheresomebody manages to steal some
sperm, put it on their bodies,they can perfectly well go to a
hospital and sit in the ER.
(42:44):
So I you know there's a lot ofit that just doesn't seem
logical to me, but you know it's.
It's very hard to change asystem and I think a lot of
people inside of the system feellike it's so deeply under
attack that they don't want toraise questions like that, I
think you raise some veryinteresting ideas for discussion
(43:07):
or debate and I'm glad you wentso deep with this work and it
sounds like you continue tostudy it and follow what's
happening around.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
You know the rape kit collection and nursing and so
on to really give it somespecial attention.
Now your story about MartyGoddard and the origins of the
rape kit received nationalattention.
Do you believe that attentionhas moved the needle in the
sexual assault advocacy space or, if not, what is still missing?
Speaker 3 (43:44):
I hope.
I'm not sure if it's moved theneedle, but what I hope to do
was, first of all, I think thatyou know one thing I discovered
in talking to people while I wasworking on the book, and then
after events and everything, andthen even interviews, like
where the first question isoften what is a rape kit?
(44:05):
And then I go throughexplaining what it is.
Well, the fact that it's amillion things right now, but
also, you know exactly how theexam works and what it is and
what I realized is like, eventhough I think almost
everybody's familiar with theidea, unless you've engaged with
it in your own life, um, youhave no idea what exactly it is
(44:29):
or how it works or what yeah whywould you problems?
Are, why would you?
Why would you and it's somesort of like that familiar yet
invisible thing and I think justby trying to have you know by
the end of reading my book, youlike absolutely know what it is,
how it works, how it's supposedto work, what's going wrong.
(44:51):
You know, and I think, just Ithink, when something's kind of
invisible, it can be taken awaymore easily.
So my intention was just to makeit visible in a new way so that
people can see what it is.
And also, I really wanted tostart a conversation about how
do we make this better and howdo we get this out unstuck from
(45:13):
the 1970s, because there's somuch potential to do things
better today.
How do we do that?
You know how do we do that andI've, you know, encountered I've
just met so many interestingpeople while reporting this book
and then afterwards, and it'snot like my ideas have sharpened
(45:37):
, because I feel like everyperson I talk to kind of I learn
about a new problem or I learnabout a new solution.
People are trying, but how muchyou know how difficult it is.
And then you know, with theTrump administration coming in,
there's like a whole wealth ofnew problems.
I had a PowerPoint lecturewhere I kind of listed some of
(46:00):
the main problems and then, as Iwas updating it, you know, it's
like I can't even put in therest of them, because I just
kind of make people toodepressed.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, Like, like we both said, it's a very complex
situation.
It doesn't need to be, I think.
Going back to the origin storyof the rape kit, you explained
it so well how simple it wasintended to be and hopefully you
know to try to make it easy toimplement and reduce the impact
to victims who have to endurethat process.
(46:34):
And I love that you mentionedbringing visibility to this
issue because, amazingly, theoriginal rape kit is housed at
the Smithsonian.
What?
Speaker 3 (46:53):
did you think about when they decided to have it on
display for visitors to see andlearn about?
Well, I was.
I'm glad to say that I was alittle bit a part of that story,
because when I was reportingthe story for the New York Times
, I realized that I hadn'tactually seen the original kit.
I mean, there were no picturesof it.
There was, you know, just no.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
I can't believe it even existed that something like
that existed.
Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah, and so I actually was in touch with
obviously a lot of people whowere there at the beginning,
obviously a lot of people whowere there at the beginning, and
one of and so I would alwaysask them like, or even Marty
Goddard's nephew took care ofher, when you know I I mean he
had all her things.
I was like is there an originalrape kid in there?
Speaker 2 (47:37):
He couldn't find one you know so.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
I was looking and looking and then finally I
talked to somebody who hadworked with Marty Goddard back
in the day, mary Dreiser, and Isaid, by chance, would you have
a rape kit?
And she was like, oh, I youknow.
There was this long, longtrauma where she thought it
might be.
She had a storage facility.
(47:59):
She went there, wasn't there,and then one day she like looked
in the back of her closet andshe found it.
Wow.
And then we were like superexcited because we could have
the New York Times photographercome and take pictures of it.
It had all the original stuffin it.
They laid it all out, they didthe pictures.
(48:19):
So those were like, as far as Iknow, the first real pictures
of the original kit.
And it's funny because it was.
It had this groovy, I mean itwas very official looking.
But it also did have a groovy1970s woman sort of.
Yeah, I, you know, on the cuton the it looked very 1970s,
(48:40):
yeah.
But um then, mary, you know Ihad, you know I think I wrote in
my article, you know I had adream that it would be displayed
in the Smithsonian as parts ofthe Smithsonian, contacted Mary
(49:06):
actually put the kit up forauction with Sotheby's.
I believe and then the two of,yeah, two branches of the
Smithsonian bid on it and theygot it sort of in a shared deal
and that's how it got to theSmithsonian.
And so then I befriended thecurators at the Smithsonian and,
(49:28):
as I was working on the book,they had resources about the
history of sexual assaultforensics that I didn't have.
They were very helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
That's remarkable.
I'm so glad that dreams do cometrue sometimes, right?
So Marty Goddard passed away 10years ago.
What do you think she would saynow, in 2025, as it relates to
rape kits, sexual assault,investigations and prosecutions?
Speaker 3 (49:54):
I think the young version of Marty, who was a.
She was a big kind of player inChicago, she really understood
politics.
She was a big kind of player inChicago, she really understood
politics.
She had a lot of power by 1981,and then she kind of flamed out
(50:19):
, doing her best to really lookinto, you know, all those hidden
problems now and trying toorganize people around making
this work again.
It's kind of a janky system.
You know that hasn't beenrethought and I part of the book
was I did reach out to thepeople I considered sort of the
(50:42):
the Marty Goddards of today,people who were really thinking
about how would we?
And there aren't many of them,unfortunately.
But I found some interestingpeople who had ideas about, you
know, how we could rethink thekit, make it more effective,
make it less burdensome on thesurvivors, burdensome on the
(51:10):
survivors, um.
So I talked to those people and, um, you know I don't have
again there's.
I think the answer has toreally come from.
I would like to see it reallycome from a survivor-led
initiative yeah um, you know,unfortunately there's too little
weight given to the survivorexperience.
There's so much asked ofsurvivors to go to an ER, wait
(51:35):
potentially eight hours, gothrough a very invasive exam
that can last five hours to gothrough what might be very
difficult interactions with thepolice.
You know that is a lot and alot of people don't have a car
to get to the hospital.
They don't have child care tobe out of pocket for 24 hours
(51:58):
doing this.
You know I mean this is notaccessible to a lot of people.
So for me that accessibilityproblem is really the big one.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, that's an incredible observation based on
a lot of work and dedicationfrom you.
We thank you for the work thatyou've done and that you're
doing, and for talking with metoday.
Speaker 3 (52:23):
Thank you so much for those great questions.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
Thanks so much for listening.
Until next time, stay safe andfollow us on social media at
National CCAW.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides.  Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer  Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.