Insightful and interesting. I love when I read a book about a subject I’m interested in and consider myself fairly passionate about, yet learn something new every chapter.

For anyone interested in sexual assault, the history of how the legal system handles it, or who just wants to learn about some modernization in the area, this is a must read.

The Secret History of he Rape Kit is not just a lesson in little-known and forgotten history, but also an incredible feat of investigative and novelistic journalism that will keep you enthralled from the very first page where we meet Marty Goddard.

Marty Goddard was more than just a woman, she was the start of a movement that would change the way we look at sexual assault forever. I was in genuine awe at this woman’s achievements and inspired by the work she did.

If you are in search of a book on feminist or women’s history, this is a story that deserves so much more attention than it ever received and is a great place to begin learning about one of the countless women whose accomplishments were muted, overlooked, or falsely claimed as the work of others.

I received an early review copy of this book several months before the book’s release and before writing my official review (Thank you to NetGalley and Vintage for my DRC!) and I still think about some of the things I learned in this book every day.

Marty Goddard had the initial ideas for the rape kit when she was working at a crisis hotline. After answering so many calls and wondering what could be done to help the countless women and other victims of sexual assault, Marty made it her mission to ensure that rape be treated as the horrible crime that it is. The main problem being that rape was a hard accusation to prove at the time, but with DNA evidence and other fields of forensics growing at a rapid pace, Marty saw the opportunity to make these accusations provable with actual, hard evidence. Eventually, Marty succeeded. But then, what happened to Marty after that? It seemed as if she just vanished into the annals of history without a trace, never to be heard from again. Until Pagan Kennedy, journalist and author of this book decided to solve the mystery of Marty’s disappearance herself.

While there is definitely a mystery at the heart of this story, it is light on the true crime aspect. Most of the focus is on the history of the rape kit’s conception and creation, as well as the story of Marty Goddard and her role in it, followed by the mystery of what happened to her. Although this is non-fiction, it does read very much like a novel and the pacing is fast.

I highly recommend this book as a forgotten part of feminist history, crime/justice history, and for the incredible writing and storytelling of Pagan Kennedy.

This book was heartbreakingly eye opening. There were so many things I didn’t know. The absolute disgust I felt reading about men and rape culture in the 70’s and 80’s.

“At the time (1970s) it was still legal in every state in America for a husband to force himself on his wife. Sexual violence that happened inside a house, inside a family, was not considered rape.”

Part of the eye opening experience I endured reading this was realizing that the rape kit was invented and utilized in the 80’s. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF RAPE KITS WERE STORED AND UNPROCESSED FOR DECADES until the Obama administration in 2015 granted millions of dollars to test these samples, FINALLY. Which led to an insane amount of convictions. The police officers didn’t care before this point in time. They treated rape survivors like a joke, hanging women’s panties over the sexual crime department in one Chicago police department.

“So many girls were crying rape, what’s the point of looking for physical evidence?” - a police detective in Pennsylvania

Yall. It’s despicable. All the false imprisonment of black men. Interrogating rape survivors for hours after they’ve been brutally assaulted and then saying “We don’t believe you. Women can’t be raped against their will.” This was so eye opening and I’m just absolutely floored that it took over 30 years for anyone to take it seriously AND ITS STILL NOT.

“The attitude of the state was, she said, “What the heck, it’s Black on Black no big deal.”

If anything, I recommend this book as some really good education on rape culture and the decades of sweat and tears it took to even have the system we have today.
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ʏᴏᴜʟʟ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴋᴇ:
•True Crime
•Women’s rights
•Current events
•Biography

The information laid out didn't feel like I was slogging through non-fiction. I realize that's a bit elementary to say but we know how some non-fiction can be, even when we're very much looking forward to reading about the subject.

Searching for details about the much overlooked and under-credited woman who made great strides in developing the Rape Kit, Mary Goddard, our author brings us along on her journey. Compelling and, unsurprisingly, frustrating to hear what Goddard was up against, both this book and the Rape Kit both show to be passion projects of their creators.

Fascinating and highly recommended!

Thank you to Netgalley for this fascinating copy of The Secret History of the Rape Kit by Pagan Kennedy in exchange for a honest review . Kennedys book finally gives credit to Marty Goddard , a pioneering woman in the 70s and 80s who developed a rape kit for use on women after sexual assaults. With no medical or legal background ,Marty was a woman on a mission to produce a kit that could help convict sexual predators . She even went so far as giving credit for the rape kit to a police officer she worked with because she felt it would have a better chance to be produced. Like the women she tried to help, ,Marty too was a victim of sexual assault and the product she developed finally gave some power back to the women who had been violated. Marty’s mental and alcohol struggles are also explored in this novel . This is a poignant portrait of a woman who was driven to do remarkable things without any recognition for her exploits.

I get why the subtitle of this is a true crime story, but I think it does a disservice to the memoir aspect of this story. I personally like reading somebody writing about a subject they are personally invested in, and giving me the context for why. But for a lot of nonfiction readers, that aspect of this book might not be for you. While there is not graphic details, the author shares her own sexual assaults, her responses to the trauma, and her understanding of how and why survivors struggle to make reports and engage in the use of a rape kit. If you want it to be removed from personal experience and the technical history of all of this, this isn't the book.

Marty Goddard is a fascinating figure, both a force of nature and a vulnerable person who got beaten down by the eras in which she lived. So much of the story of how the kit came to be, more about the backlog, about the way in which these kits are STILL viewed, is difficult to swallow and disappointing. This isn't a story with a happy ending. The kits have now been around for almost 50 years and the system is still built to fail survivors.

I didn't appreciate the small line that throws colleges and universities under the bus and completely ignores Title IX, but that's it's own book.

Overall, I learned a lot, I want to give credit where it's due to Marty Goddard, and it helped re-energize me to keep fighting for these cases to be handled better at every single level.

This is a book I think EVERYONE should read. Detailing the creation of the rape kit, Pagan Kennedy also shares the story of the woman who invented it, how sexual assault was viewed at the time and other progresses towards helping survivors. I found this book incredibly fascinating. Seeing the ups and downs of getting sexual assault to even be recognized as a legitimate violent crime was just wild and also seeing how many cases were mishandled back then just infuriated me. Also, the book dives deep into how awful women of color, particularly black women, are treated when they report sexual assault. I thought the look at how hospitals and clinics handled sexual assault survivors during the pandemic and in isolation was incredibly interesting and ingenious. This book will make you so angry at times of behalf of survivors, but you also get to see how many people are working so hard to make things better in so many different ways. I’m so glad I read this book and I won’t be forgetting it any time soon.
CW: sexism, sexual harassment, sexual assault, racism, rape, child abuse, animal cruelty, dementia, mental illness, death

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for an advanced digital readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately I feel like this was a mess. It’s a topic that is personally important to me but I had a hard time figuring out how things connected or why each segue was there.

I appreciated learning the origin story of the rape kit and the life of the woman who brought it into existence. I love a good research story, and this one definitely delivered. The details of how the author uncovered and discovered the threads of the story were just as fascinating as the topic.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback. An often infuriating look at the treatment of sexual assault cases through history into the present, but incredibly interesting.

The Secret History of the Rape Kit traces the origins of one of the first scientific attempts to collect and catalog evidence of sexual assault. While some kits had existed prior, the Vitullo rape kit was one of the most widely used. Named after a Chicago police officer, Kennedy's history traces the actual origin and design to Marty Goddard, a sexual assault advocate who pressed the Chicago PD to take rape seriously.

That history shows, once again, how rarely women and people of color are given the proper credit for their inventions and innovations. Sadly, Goddard dies an anonymous death, and while it isn't clear this is the case, her alcoholism surely wasn't helped by the heavy mental load she carried while traversing the country trying to get rape kits to be used by other jurisdictions. She is largely a footnote in this history; little is known about her early and later years.

As a result of that lack of knowledge, this book is short and is filled with quite a bit of side information related to the topic or tangential topics. A lot of other reviews point out that the author's own experiences with sexual violence don't feel cohesive in the story, but I didn't have the same issue. It is fair that she explains her interest in pursuing the story, though I don't think it is the most compelling of the diversions. Her brief discussions of the racist and sexist history of patent law make me want to read a whole book on it, as does her discussion of how the Chicago PD's Red Squad made her a target in her early years

Overall, I am glad this book exists, because we need to reckon with how poorly we have always handled sexual violence in this country and we need to memorialize and celebrate the people on the ground who have attempted to make the process more humane.

* Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.*

Wow I've never read anything like this. Incredibly informative and sad but absolutely worth it. Cannot believe that the justice system overlooked rape victims for so long (actually it's not that shocking...) but I'm so grateful to learn Marty Goddard's story and know her hard work.

You’re likely familiar with the sexual assault evidence collection box or “rape kit”- whether you’ve heard it referenced on a crime drama or known someone who’s needed it. Up until recently, it was also sometimes called the “Vitullo Kit,” named for the former Chicago police sergeant who first introduced it to the public in the ‘70s. But in 2018, while working on a different story, NYT contributor Pagan Kennedy stumbled upon another name in the archive: Martha “Marty” Goddard. Digging further, Pagan stumbled upon the epitome of a “behind every great man…” story.

It turns out that local sexual assault activist and advocate Marty Goodard, who worked closely with Chicago PD at the time, was the one who championed the kit from conception to implementation. Understanding that the crime of sexual assault suffered from a credibility problem of the legal system not taking women seriously, Goddard worked behind the scenes while uplifting police sergeant Vitullio as the public face of the kit to ensure its success.

This book takes you back to how Goddard came up with the idea, got funding for it (from the Playboy Foundation– yes THAT Playboy), the roll-out and reception, all the way to modern day with the nationwide rape kit backlogs and an epiloge on the process to memorialize the kit in the National Museum of American history.

What I loved most about this read was its blend of genres. The Secret History of the Rape Kit is part investigative journalism, part biography, part feminist history, part cultural commentary. But it also infuses elements of memoir and mystery–through Pagan’s weaving in of her personal narrative, as well as a bit of intrigue as she attempts to track down: what happened to Marty Goddard?

“The Secret History…” was also personally and professionally meaningful to me as someone who works in the sexual assault prevention field. To this day, less than 1% of rape cases result in a conviction. This is for a variety of reasons– most victims choose not to report, often times prosecutors decline to take the case, etc. But understanding just how pivotal Goddard’s invention was to lending credibility to sexual assault as a serious crime worthy of forensic investigation was eye opening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the eARC.

This book is hard to get through. It is graphic and heart wrenching. I have conflicting feelings for many of the reasons that other readers did. Maybe a bit exploitative, maybe a bit confusing, maybe a bit hard to get into. I don't know. Just hard to explain my thoughts fully.

This was definitely different from anything l've ever reviewed here on my account. While I do love listening to true crime podcasts, this is the first time l've ever read a true crime book - and it was an interesting experience!

This is a very tough subject to read on, but once I saw the book and read the blurb, it immediately caught my interest. We follow the author, Kennedy and she discovers how the rape kit was ever formed in a man's world - because how could something that's against men ever be allowed to be made? While we follow her and her journey, we learn about Marty Goddard, the true creator of the rape kit.

It was a bit difficult following the book along at first. We swap between timelines as the author treats the book as a discovery while also adding in her own experiences. While I didn't mind it, I wish we could have gotten more of Goddard's life as everything was forming. This is also a highly triggering book - so be aware that there are very detailed scenes of rape throughout the book. While I didn't mind this, I feel as though the author should have held back from sharing Goddard's own experiences as she is no longer with us to share her consent to her own post. Despite this, the book was very informative and would actually recommend it to any true crime lovers out there!

Make sure to check out any content warnings first.

Okay, first let me say that the topic and history is 5-star material. I appreciated what the author was trying to do, but the presentation for this one was not for me. Also, I found the mention of it being a true crime story to be misleading as I would categorize it as a memoir/speculative history.

I found this to be muddled, repetitive, and contradictory. The author frequently attributed feelings to Goddard although she never spoke with her directly, which felt weird and forced. There were also times where it felt like the author was trying to force a narrative/connections - “Scott told me his aunt never mentioned the Nutshell Studies. But…how could she not have known…” She also explained how Goddard was a private person/unfindable, but then the author proceeded to mention Goddard’s assault multiple times throughout the book, which felt disrespectful and contradictory.

As this topic is already sensitive, I felt this book was a bit forced and exploitative.

First and foremost, this book is meant to be a a dive into the Marty Goddard's early life as she championed the invention and rollout of a widely used r*p* kit across America. Throughout her research, Pagan Kennedy finds that Marty Goddard herself has disappeared from the limelight, a curious discovery as Marty seems to have been a very involved advocate for women in the public scene.

This topic is interesting and the history important; however, I feel misled as a reader. On one side, it was an easy read and at times enjoyable. However, this book does not feel like it would have done Marty justice. This was a memoir of Pagan's traumatic experience and how she went on her own journey to find "answers". The little bits of information you do get as a reader regarding the problematic history of forensics, the campaigns launched by advocates, the adoption of the kits across hospitals in the U.S. and the result of said adoptions (including COVID era) feel so completely washed over.

I did not feel that this was a "deep dive" into the history of the r*p* kit. Sometimes a good article can just stay a good article. I don't feel that anything introduced outside of it was a prevalent finding, I just learned more about Pagan.

Let me start this review by saying THIS BOOK IS TRIGGERING. There are VERY graphic sexual assault accounts about both the author and the woman she’s writing about. If that easily triggers you, please do not read this book.

This is a book about the woman who made the first properly used Rape Kit in America and advocated for woman’s rights. There were a lot of things about the book that pissed me off but it was more the disheartening realization that it took until the 1970s for this to be taken semi-seriously. As someone who grew up watching SVU and hearing about Olivia Benson (she’s not mentioned in the book; this was just my own observation and clarity) being survivors guiding light, it hit me why her character has been so very important to the cause. Less than 25 years had passed since anyone really started advocating to SA victims and this was the first onscreen fmc to fight for us in this way and continue to fight for us.

Anyway, I loved the books main plot and history BUT I don’t know if this needed to be a book ? There was a lot of things that could’ve been taken out and the point still would have gotten across. But for my own bias reasons, I give it a 5/5.

This book and its topic were incredibly interesting and important. I can confidently say that I learned a lot, but I also came out of this with questions about the ethics of writing a book like this. Marty Goddard was, needless to say, a massively important figure in victim advocacy and justice. While it makes sense to include her personal connection to her work, it felt like perhaps there were too many details that Marty was never given the option to approve or deny. In this way, I wondered whether the inclusion of her story would have been welcomed, or if it would have been right to leave out the specifics in exchange for a more vague description.

While there was a lot of great information in this book, it also felt like there was a lot of speculation. In spots where there was ambiguity or a lack of information available, the author seemed to insert their own belief of what may have happened rather than just allowing there to be uncertainty. At the very least, they seemed to be honest when this was the case, but i still felt like it made me question the validity of other details about Marty Goddard’s life. The author seemed to feel very spiritually connected to Marty and it felt like this sort of muddied the waters at times.

I thought the part of this read that shined the most was the final section where the author spoke with Marty’s sister. I felt like I got the most out of that portion as it was nice to hear from someone who knew Marty from a very young age and was able to give insight into her life that hadn’t been shared before. I could feel the love that her sister had for her in spite of their strained relationship. I wasn’t super happy with the epilogue, as it almost felt incomplete. It felt as though there was more to that story, but it was cut off somewhat abruptly.

Nonetheless, I’m appreciative of the new information I received about this massively important figure and the contributions she made to support a group that is historically under-supported and over-criticized. I also appreciated the author’s honesty and vulnerability in sharing their own story. Thank you to Pagan Kennedy and NetGalley for access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story brings Martha Goddard, the true inventor of the rape kit, to the forefront and helps cement her place in history.
In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested. How were people getting away with these heinous acts? One of the answers was a lack of both physical evidence and training in acquiring and keeping it. By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault while treating survivors with dignity. She designed the rape kit with the technical help of a man—a man she had to allow to take credit for her work.
Journalist Pagan Kennedy decided it was time Goddard’s name should be the one everyone knew. When she went looking for Goddard, she discovered that even Goddard's closest friends didn’t know where she was. While trying to track her down, Kennedy delves further into the problematic history of forensics in America. During this search for answers, Kennedy must face her own experiences with sexual assault as well as her own desire for justice.
This book takes turns that many readers would have never seen coming. The Playboy Foundation is a vital part of getting the rape kit off the ground? The book goes into detail how and why this happened. It also explains why the kit is named after a man when a woman does all the work. Minorities and trauma as needs for self-testing are discussed in detail. It also leaves women scratching our heads about how these tests led to jury convictions, and now we’re struggling for convictions again.
Kennedy writes nonfiction in a way that is accessible to the common reader. It’s not written in longer clinic paragraphs. Jargon is limited and clearly explained. Kennedy also goes past just the rape kit; she makes you care about the inventor. The mystery of Goddard’s whereabouts pulls you in and your emotions weave with hers. That does mean there is bias and a lack of emotional objectivity. But that does not ruin the trueness of the story as it’s biased in its own way: misogyny is rife with rape so of course it is with the rape kit.
Part history, part biography The History of the Rape Kit details the history and present of the rape kit while bringing forward the woman who made it all possible.