Secret History of the Rape Kit

Marty Goddard dreamed up a new crime-solving tool--a kit that could help rape survivors fight for justice. This thrilling investigation tells the story of the troubled, heroic woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.

"The Secret History of the Rape Kit is stunning: part thriller, part feminist reclamation, part personal journey, fully a page-turner. How did we not know about Marty Goddard?"—Peggy Orenstein author of Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex

In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool--the rape kit--and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work.

When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.

“Fascinating . . . Incandescent . . . Kennedy’s love for her subject reverberates throughout the book.” —New York Times Book Review

“Kennedy works deftly with sometimes scant information, weaving her reporting on Goddard’s life and contribution into the narrative. . . . A page-turning mystery. . . . Thanks to Kennedy’s dogged reporting . . . Goddard can step out from the shadows of history. . . . Yet Kennedy’s book isn’t just the hero’s journey of a forgotten heroine. It acknowledges that the system works best when it can be improved by those who are most affected by sexual assault—and the women who are willing to risk obscurity or damage to their reputation in order to finish the job Goddard started.” —The Atlantic

“If the criminal-justice landscape for rape victims remains objectively terrible, it is somewhat less terrible because of Marty Goddard and her comrades in the anti-rape movement of the seventies and eighties. Goddard, who faded into alcoholism and mental illness toward the end of her life, is the tragic heroine of “The Secret History of the Rape Kit.” . . . This narrative of gendered injustice and the redemptive power of feminist history has an almost mythical force.”—New Yorker

PAGAN KENNEDY is the author of eleven books. Her journalism has appeared in dozens of publications, and she has worked as a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, and The Village Voice. She has co-produced and authored a serial podcast for Radiotopia network that won a Webby Award. She has also been awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, an NEA Fellowship, a Smithsonian Fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.