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All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Mysterious Woman Who Pioneered the Rape Kit
00:22:01
In the 1970s, a woman named Marty Goddard pioneered the rape kit, a new, standardized way to collect evidence following a sexual assault. Then, a man got credit for creating the kit, and Goddard disappeared.
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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Listeners, this conversation will deal with sexual assault. If at any time you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline. That number is 800-656-44673. They are open 24 hours a day. In the early 1970s, a woman invented the rape kit. A man got credit for it, and then that woman disappeared. That is the starting point for our next conversation with the author of the book, the Secret History of the Rape A True Crime Story. In the early 1970s, evidence in sexual assault cases was often gathered haphazardly and stored improperly. It made prosecuting cases very difficult. And in Chicago, a woman named Marty Gott decided to do something about it. Marty volunteered at a crisis hotline and knew firsthand how few survivors received justice. She came up with a new standardized way for training hospital staff and police in gathering evidence in a rape case. Her rape kit bore the name of a male police officer who worked with her on the project. And soon her contributions were all but forgotten. But just at the moment that Marty's invention became an essential part of police procedure, she disappeared. This is the story that journalist Pagan Kennedy seeks to get to the bottom of in her new book, the Secret History of the Rape A True Crime Story. Does she find Marty? You'll have to read to find out. Pagan. Kenny Kennedy. Excuse me. Welcome to all of it.
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Pagan Kennedy
Hi. Thanks for having me. And thanks for not dropping any spoilers.
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Alison Stewart
We're gonna do our best. What was it about this woman in this story that had you so obsessed?
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Pagan Kennedy
Well, I'll jump into that first, but I want to say just put a pin in. It's so complicating. As I learned as I delved really deep into this story for the book, it's very complicated to say who invented the exact first rape kit. So we can't put that on Marty Goddard. Exactly. But she was really crucial in creating and rolling out the system we have now. But I wouldn't call her the inventor. So just want to offer that little correction. We can get into that later. But so how. So you just asked me, how did I get into this? Yeah. So in 2018. Everybody was seeing the rape kit quite a bit in the news because of the scandal over the backlogs. There were almost half a million kits that. That hadn't been tested. They'd been warehoused or even thrown out by police departments. So this. This was very much in the news. And I. It was as if, you know, I had been. I'd known about the kit, I think my, you know, for decades. It just had always been there. But suddenly one day I sort of was reading one of those stories, and I just thought, how amazing is it that there actually is this national system for allowing survivors to file their evidence, get it tested, and under the right conditions, you know, have this DNA evidence that can either, you know, especially when it's paired with the evidence from other kits, can show the path of a predator, or could be used to exonerate an innocent man who's been sent to prison for a rape he didn't commit or for not who. Who did not do anything and has been pinned with a rape conviction. So this is just such an amazing tool. And it seemed so unique in the history of our designed environment because I could think of so many things that allow or encourage sexual assault in our designed environment, like half of the Internet and, you know, stalkerware and, you know, you can think of all kinds of things just the way buildings are designed with dark corners. And so, so much is. Seems designed to just with a lack of care for, you know, women and girls and trans people and other people who are vulnerable. And so I really began to wonder, well, how did this thing come into the world, this. The world, you know, how. How would something so feminist ever get invented? So that led me to Wikipedia. And I, back then, on Wikipedia, it said that this Chicago police sergeant named Louis Vo had invented the kit. And I, I. So I really wanted to know the story of that. And. But he had died at that point. And so I just kept looking and I kept seeing this name, Marty Goddard, and who, as an activist who had been really crucial as well and really involved in this rollout of the first really big sexual assault evidence system in the world. And I. So I began looking for her, and I couldn't find any evidence that she was dead. I looked for obituaries and memorials, you know, so I had to assume she was alive. So that started a very long, complicated hunt for her and her story.
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Alison Stewart
Before the invention of what we call the rape kit, how would evidence be collected in a typical rape case?
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Pagan Kennedy
So the thing is that in the early 70s, when all of this was happening, first of all, marital rape was legal in every state. And the general attitude in most police departments was that you couldn't actually prove that a sexual assault had happened. So sorry, gonna cough. I'm another sick guest.
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Alison Stewart
You know what, I'm sick too. I spent all weekend in bed reading your book actually. So we'll just, we'll just, we'll just help each other along. Let me start again. My guest is.
- [07:15]
Pagan Kennedy
So I'm going to co. But anyway, so sorry, I've lost track of where I was. So she. I think we were talking about. Oh, the way the police were in the 70s, in the early 70s. So there was just a general attitude that you couldn't, you couldn't ever prove it. So generally there was no investigation. And it's, it's very, you know what's so bizarre is I was a really little kid at this time. I lived through this and when I went back to research it in the last few years, I was shocked at the period that I myself lived through and just how different it was. Not that things are fantastic today, but it was so much worse then because there was no sense that child abuse happened all the time. It was thought to be very rare. There was no sense that you could actually ever prove that a sexual assault had happened. And it was always thought to be a he said, she said. And even like the police handbooks would say, many or most of the women who accuse rape are liars who were just trying to frame a boyfriend cuz they're jealous. I mean, that's.
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Alison Stewart
The women were put on trial when the cops got involved, like, well, where were you? What were you wearing, what were you doing?
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Pagan Kennedy
Exactly, exactly. And more. And mostly they were just sort of blown off because it was thought there was no point. And that gets me into, you know, when as I was researching this book, you know, the kit that rolled out in Chicago and became the basis for what is now our nationwide system wasn't actually the first one I found. If you really dig in the weeds, there were all these little experiments with. Because there was no real. There was a. By 1974, there was this huge anti rape movement in the country. There was, you know, the first generation of women were graduating from law school, so there was a lot of pressure to actually treat sexual assault as a crime. And so there was interest in developing something that was more systematized for collecting sexual assault evidence. So you can see like little experiments with rape kits kind of popping up here and there, but not really, you know, necessarily catching on. And this is what fascinates me because one of the, one of my real interests is the politics of design. And you can see what's so important about the Chicago kit, which Marty Goddard did develop with Louis Fatullo. Although she had a big hand in shaping the rollout, the training, the funding, she really made it happen at a practical level and shaped its ethic in a great, great deal. I'm going to cough again. Sorry. But some of the early kits are really disturbing. There was one developed by a guy who was, got in trouble. He was later accused of being a wife beater. He was a police, he was on the police force. He, he had all kinds of, you know, allegations against him. Was not a nice guy, probably, but. And he created, you know, this system for Santa Ana. Sorry, my phone is also beeping. And he created this, this early kit in, in California. But the instructions said that if the woman who accuses rape is a sleazy freelance prostitute, then you don't have to collect evidence from her. That shows you the importance isn't just the object itself, it's the attitude, the point of view of the object.
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Alison Stewart
You know what?
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Pagan Kennedy
I'm sorry, I'm having trouble.
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Alison Stewart
That's okay. Let's take a quick break, get a glass of water, get a cup of tea. We're talking to Peyton Kennedy. The name of her book is the Secret History of the Rape, A True Crime Story. We'll be back after a quick break. This is all of it.
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Progressive Insurance
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name youe Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [12:11]
Alison Stewart
Here's a way you can support WNYC in our centennial year. Donate your used car. We'll turn your old car into the news and conversation that we've been serving to the community for over 100 years. Many listeners have already donated their cars to WNYC. It's an easy way to support the station and you'll get a tax deduction. Learn more@wnyc.org car.
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Pagan Kennedy
This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a path to peace in the Middle East.
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Alison Stewart
I've also had many opportunities to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And when the conversation comes to normalization with Saudi Arabia, he knows that for Israel, too, that would be an absolute game changer.
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Pagan Kennedy
Antony Blinken's Final Exit Interview. That's the New Yorker Radio hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Peyton Kennedy. She's written a book called the Secret History of the Rape A True Crime Story. And listeners of anytime you need support, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline. That number is 800-656-4673. It is open 24 hours a day. So we've been talking about Marty Gardner, but you mentioned the name Louis Vitullo. Am I saying it right?
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Pagan Kennedy
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Okay. He's the man whose name ended up on rape kits. Marty went to him with this idea, and he immediately kind of told her, like, get out of here. Right. That was his first.
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Pagan Kennedy
Well, that's the version I got from a very close associate of Marty Goddard's who was, you know, talked to her right after this happened. So, yeah, the version that I heard. And, you know, and we're never going to know exactly what happened, but, you know, one really reliable source told me that, yes, Marty Goddard went in and wanted to build a really modern sexual assault evidence system that would revolve around a kit. And then initially she called her friend after the meeting with Fatulo and said, well, that didn't go well. He threw me out of his office. But then days later, again, according to this source, he called her back in and he had made a prototype of the kit and that. But there was so much to this system that wasn't in the kit. You know, it was the training. It was getting it into hospitals, it was funding it. So that's also something we can talk about.
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Alison Stewart
Why was he chosen as a. Why did he end up being somewhat of a good collaborator with Marty on this kit, even though he may have bounced her out of the office at first?
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Pagan Kennedy
Well, he was what I would call, like Chicago famous. He was. He was head of, you know, he was a very important guy in the crime lab. He had had some big wins, and he was somebody with a lot of clout in the police department. And it was very important to obviously have buy in from them. So in the end, so Marty Goddard did as she. She created the whole system around it, which would involve training everybody, getting it into hospitals, actually making the kit, and then raising the money. And she also trademarked the kit, and she decided, I assume it was she who decided, excuse me, to trademark it under his name as the Vitullo kit, because she filed the trademark or her nonprofit did. And we can, I think, it's pretty clear that having his name on it would really help the adoption of this kit and give it the imprimatur of, you know, a man in. At the. In the crime lab in Chicago who was well respected. So another really interesting thing, and another man involved in this story is, we.
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Alison Stewart
Have to get into that, that Playboy had a role in this. Explain to people how Playboy had a role in the implementation of the rape kit.
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Pagan Kennedy
Yes, so. So Marty Goddard had a friend named Margaret Standish, who is now Margaret McCorney. And Margaret was working for the Playboy foundation, which was funding actually a surprising amount of civil. Excuse me, civil liberties causes. I'm going to drink some water. And women. Sorry. I think the theme of your show today is that everybody has the flu. It's true. I thought I was better than this. I am really sorry.
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Alison Stewart
It's okay. Take your time.
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Pagan Kennedy
Yeah. So there is this fascinating piece of history I found out about wherein Marty Goddard just couldn't find any other funding for the pilot program to roll out the rape kit system in Chicago. So she ended up working with the Playboy foundation and even having fundraisers in the Playboy Mansion, which was, you know, not sort of some strange bedfellows. And. But, you know, it's really. It was really interesting looking at the history of the Playboy foundation too, because they did fund a lot of these initiatives for women's health and women's sexual freedom.
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Alison Stewart
Pagan. Once they established this rape kit, what was its evolution like? Was it immediately a success? Did it require training? How did it evolve?
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Pagan Kennedy
Yeah, it was really expensive to do it right, because you really had to train, you know, all the nurses, you had to work with the hospitals, the idea. And, you know, it's only kind of recently I realized how radical this idea was and how much it shifted our norms. But I think what Marty Goddard and other activists at that time fought for was the basic idea that if you're a survivor, you have the right to go to a hospital that's accessible to you and file your evidence, go through a forensic exam and file your evidence and have that evidence tested. Now, you know, we've fallen short of that many times, but that norm was created and it didn't exist before the 70s. So that was huge. And it was very expensive to do that because you had to get this service in every hospital and work with, train the police and the crime labs and the healthcare workers to all be on the same page and to understand how to create a chain of evidence and work together.
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Alison Stewart
Sorry, I want to ask you a little bit about Marty's disappearance. What happened to her? Why did she suddenly go off into the ether?
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Pagan Kennedy
Well, I don't want to spoil the twists and turns in the book too much, but I did find out through sort of while I was still hunting for what had happened to her. You know, the strange thing was I would call up, I would track down the people she had worked with, people she had known, and none of them knew where she was either, so they all wanted me to find her as well. But I did learn that she was assaulted herself in the late 1970s after she had already created found, created her nonprofit and started up this system and, you know, worked on the pilot program and done all her amazing work. And I think that was definitely a turning point for her when she began to kind of fall apart and drink more. And then I think also it was really hard for her by the 1980s, as the forensics system and sexual assault forensics, she was still working in that realm and going around to different states and explaining to them how to set up these programs and helping build a national system. But I think she wasn't respected as much because now people who had degrees in criminology or, you know, were kind of taking over. And it was. She was seen as some. You know, she just wasn't seen as somebody with the credentials, even though she was very much key to the existence of this new national system.
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Alison Stewart
I wanted to ask you, you were able to locate a taped interview with Marty from the early 2000s. What did you learn about her from listening to those tapes?
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Pagan Kennedy
I actually found two. So I had about three hours. One was never published, and one is still on the Internet, so you can find it. And so that's really where, even when I was still looking for Marty Goddard and trying to figure out what had happened to her, I was really able to begin to piece together her whole story from these extensive tapes and to begin to get such a image of her in my mind. You know, she was this early 70s divorcee who wore the silk blouse with that big, you know, kind of 1970s bow tie and the briefcase. And she was really into being. You know, she was really good at kind of flying under the radar, coming into an office, explaining what she was going to do, how she had the answer to your problem, and meeting with everybody, talking with everybody. She took cabs all around Chicago, knew everybody, you know, and was just one of those amazing people, connectors and idea people who just tirelessly work on something and make it happen.
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Alison Stewart
The name of the book is the Secret History of the Rape a true crime story. It's by Pagan Kennedy. Pagan, thank you so much for being with us. And take care of yourself.
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Pagan Kennedy
We're gonna let cold you too.
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Ira Flatow
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.