Thank you Pagan Kennedy and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor Publishing for a NetGalley ARC copy of the Secret History of the Rape Kit!

Rating 2.5/5

While I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Marty Goddard and her contributions to the criminal justice system, I do find the Title of the book to be very misleading.

The book as a whole comes off more as a memoir of the author's past traumas mixed with largely speculative history tidbits, leaving it feeling muddled and unfinished. Though there's no disagreeing that Goddard is an important female historical icon to be admired, the author's commentary on the imaginary relationship between herself and Goddard came across uncomfortable at best. Additionally, while I believe, her writings into what Goddard's life may have been like was supposed to make the story more immersive, it left me with an overwhelming feeling of how little the author actually knew about Goddard and her day to day life.

Unfortunately, I found the author's commentary to be under informed and severely biased which overshadowed Marty Goddard and her accomplishments.

⭐️: 4/5

I’m not normally a nonfiction reader, but at the time I requested this, I was at the point where I was reading books that seemed particularly interesting or relevant to topics I’m interested in. I’ve since taken a step back from reading almost all nonfiction books, but since this was an ARC I was approved for, and seemed like such an important piece of previously unknown history, I was still excited to pick it up.

This was a pretty quick and short read, which you can tell based on the length, but what I didn’t realize is that the (already short) length is artificially inflated by pages and pages of sources in the form of notes at the end of the book. I think that the length worked to the subject matter’s favor though, since there’s only so much that could be said about this topic without either getting entirely too dark, or feeling repetitive. Even so, the book did feel a little repetitive at times, and a little unfocused at times also, but also, as I said, I haven’t been reading much nonfiction recently, so maybe that’s the norm. I think that there was an opportunity to tell the story a little differently, like potentially relating the solving of unsolved cases back to developments and stepping stones in the trajectory of making the rape kit more commonplace, instead of relying on the author’s parasocial relationship with and musings about Marty Goddard.

The topic of this book is really interesting, and so enlightening and important to learn about the ways that the patriarchy has been used to keep women from being able to take credit for their intellectual property and profit from it. When I read books about topics such as these, it reinforces just how much men are the worst, and makes me want to fight to burn down the patriarchy. Overall, this was a pretty interesting look into a piece of history that has been overlooked and looked down upon for decades.

Thank you to @netgalley and @aaknopf for this eARC for my honest review!!

A book that is part investigative journalism, part intimate biography, and part memoir, The Secret History of the Rape Kit by Pagan Kennedy tells the story of Marty Goddard, a Chicago nonprofit worker who created and championed the use of the first rape kits beginning in the 1970s. A tireless advocate for sexual assault survivors and legal reform, Marty Goddard was a nationwide fixture as she toured the country informing people about the use of the rape kit as a tool for sexual assault convictions until she abruptly disappeared from public life in 1998.

The first rape kits were officially and publicly named the “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit” after Chicago police sergeant Louis Vitullo to imply involvement and leadership from a high-powered male police officer in an effort to persuade other officers to take rape kits seriously and use them as the powerful tools they were capable of being. This naming choice led Marty Goddard’s fingerprint to be forgotten, crediting a man who had little to no involvement in the project with her decades of labor and invention.

In The Secret History of the Rape Kit, author Pagan Kennedy seeks to rewind this story to the beginning, bringing Marty Goddard back to the center. Kennedy works tirelessly and to the point of obsession to rediscover Marty’s story and in doing so, finds the words to tell her own. As much as this book is an investigation and a biography, it is also about the author’s experiences and research and writing processes.

Kennedy’s deep dive into Marty’s story calls to mind the podcast “Finding Richard Simmons” in that they both make the reader/listener question who has the right to tell which stories. Did Marty want the world to know what is revealed about her? I don’t know. But I do know she deserves credit for her work history denied her.

Some of the facts presented in this book truly wowed me and I found myself sharing the information I learned with anyone who was around to listen. The beginning of the book especially captivated me and the best part of the story was seeing how others had taken the idea of the rape kit and kept working on it to design a process that empowers the survivor. This evolution gives me hope.

Overall, I would highly recommend The Secret History of the Rape kit to anyone interested in history, law, biography, or investigative journalism. The book was propulsive and interesting throughout, with information to share and a message not soon forgotten.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: It's very difficult to write a review for a book like this. A very important account of the development of the rape kit. We learn about the women who fought to educate police, the media, hospitals, journalist, and the public. This book will make you feel very angry, and it's important to understand the history and the fight behind trying to get women's voices to be heard. Enjoy is not a word I would use here, this was educational and important. I would recommend.

Oh, goodness… where do I even start? I was so so excited for this book, excited that someone was giving this story a voice, excited that someone was giving these women a voice… giving Marty a voice. But, man… the writing is terrible. This whole story fell completely flat because of how disjointed and unorganized the writing is. We are bounced around from present day, to past, to Pagan’s story, to Marty’s family member’s stories… the whole thing is a mess. I think perhaps there’s just not enough information about Marty’s life to justify a whole book, because a lot of the chapters and writing felt like extra information designed to pad the story and make the book an “acceptable” length.
Also, this read more as a memoir about Pagan’s life with some history about Marty sprinkled throughout, rather than what I thought I was signing up for: a HISTORY of the rape kit. Honestly, a better title may have been “Stories of Rape and the Life of Marty”
I am disappointed, and I don’t love giving such negative reviews, but honestly, this one is a complete, 100% nope, from me.

Please note: this review is now posted on GoodReads
Thank you for letting me read!

Mixed Reaction
The book started with promise, detailing the barriers to investigating and prosecuting rape cases. Martha Goddard's efforts to develop a rape kit and educate law enforcement and health care workers about its use were truly impressive. The book lost me with the telling of Martha's difficulties later in life and the author's telling of her own experience with sexual assault. I found her portrayal of Martha's personal life invasive, unnecessary and distasteful.

I grew up watching Criminal Minds and Law and Order: SVU and I'm pretty sure that due to the frequency rape kits are used on the show I never considered that they were developed in the late 1900's. Reading the history of the rape kit was an eye opening experience as it touched on how little these crimes were reported prior to the rape kit being developed and the resistance they felt in introducing the kit into hospitals and police stations. It sounds a bit redundant but reading the history of the kit itself allowed me to appreciate how far we have come in America in regards to sex crimes. The book itself does touch on how things can still be improved and did have real life examples of rape which can be hard to read for some. While I am typically a faster paced reader the heavier content and frustration I felt at people in positions of power in the late 1900's made this a longer read.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone that is interested in history and seeing how far we have come in terms of sex crimes.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a honest review!

This is a great history of how the tape kit came to be - a tool that helped solve many, many sexually-related crimes. What I didn’t like was the author’s constant insertion of her own sexual assault experience. It was so frequent, and sometimes irrelevant, that it took away from the importance of the discovery. The book also had a slant towards feminism and that women should be afraid of men - a vibe I don’t subscribe to.

This book was middle of the road for me I think for some reasons that would really appeal to some readers and would make others pass on the book. The author's personal connection to the subject matter was clear and I think depending on how you view that it can be a really good strength or a disadvantage. It definitely brings a specific perspective to the story and I think pushes the author's attention to detail and informs some of the connections made between the information. However, that same connection I think pushes the book's narrative into some tangential areas where it could be more straightforward.

The book blends biography, general history, and memoir. I think it would have benefited from more defined sections rather than intertwining the three throughout. I do think the information was really interesting but I wasn't the biggest fan of the author's writing style.

A good nonfiction editor should ask their writers whether their project is better a book or a blog post. Pagan Kennedy’s The Secret History of the Rape Kit, a bloated elaboration of her 2020 piece for the New York Times, drifts meretriciously from the subject of the article toward herself. The book’s focus remains on Marty Goddard, but only on the surface, as most of Secret History is reserved for Kennedy’s meditations, autobiographical anecdotes, and contrived racial bona fides.

Kennedy appears to believe that Goddard is the first self-styled inventor bitter at not having received due credit for their creation. The conceit of the article, and then the book, is that Goddard invented the sexual assault evidence-collection kit but a scientist in the Chicago Police Department’s crime lab stole the idea and branded it with his name. Kennedy offers no evidence for this beyond old interviews with Goddard grumbling about it. But she reaches a bizarrely illogical conclusion: “It seemed logical . . . that the most effective inventor of a sexual-assault forensics system would be a woman. And it also seemed cruelly inevitable that a man would be the one to receive the credit.” Kennedy believes that, since most victims of sexual assault are women, then a woman probably invented the evidence-collection kit.

What a sad, cramped way at approaching scientific innovation. Vitullo, who served in World War II, spent his entire career in public service, and retired from the police department in 1979, cuts a strange villain. There is no suggestion that he profited from Chicago’s adoption of evidence collection kits at Goddard’s expense. It does Goddard no disservice that the kits, which we now simply call evidence-collection kits, were for a time known as Vitullo kits. (For someone as obsessed with fashionably correct terminology as Kennedy is, it is ironic that she prefers the outdated "rape kit.")

Kennedy won’t hear of it. She uses this fantasized intellectual property theft as a springboard into a full-throated airing of grievances. She complains that a woman in the eighteenth century could not own a patent, even though the patent cited her as the inventrix, even though there was no suggestion that this legal fiction deprived the woman of anything due her, even though this anecdote has no relevance to Goddard and her kits.

From here, it was a seamless transition to racial grievance. Never mind that evidence-collection kits almost certainly benefit black women more than any other demographic. Never mind that Goddard wasn’t black. The reader is still treated to pages upon pages of early American law prohibiting blacks from owning intellectual property and Dred Scott. The only apparent connection to Goddard is the general idea of someone being ripped off.

The fluff continued with Kennedy’s pretended attempts to find and interview Goddard. “Pretended,” because had the author really wanted to find her subject, she could have hired a private investigator who after three hours’ work would have written her email saying that Goddard had passed away. Instead, Kennedy watched interviews, interviewed friends, read articles, and gazed at her navel for six months (and precious dozens of pages).

The overall impression that this book makes is one of inauthenticity. The prose showed no real concern for Goddard, for women, for black people. And no real concern for victims of sexual assault. There was only the flavor of bedazzled, neon-lettered mock virtue that liberal women feel compelled to air.

The subtitle of this book, “A True Crime Story,” is inapt. This is not a story about true crime; it is a story about virtue signaling — and about Pagan Kennedy.

This was certainly interesting but could be a sensitive subject for some/many. I appreciated the mix of personal account with the historical information about the development of the rape kit. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

Pagan Kennedy, a sexual assault survivor, investigates the struggle of how the rape kit came to be, and of its creator’s obscurity. The result is a blending of Kennedy’s own story with that of her search for Marty Goddard, the woman who fought for better treatment of sexual assault victims and their evidence. Goddard’s story is interesting, yet spotty, and left me wishing for more information on her activism, life, and seemingly quiet retreat into seclusion.

True crime at its best!

At first glance, I wasn’t too sure what to expect with this book. Worried it would just be a graphic retelling of sexual misconduct in the decades prior to advancements in forensic technology. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic, it might not be for everyone, but I think Pagan Kennedy did an amazing job covering it while telling the story of forgotten forensic pioneer, Marty Goddard, and the innovative work she did in developing the rape kit. Marty was a devoted sexual assault victim advocate, working alongside police and health care professionals to try and help women and children who had been subjected to abuse. Sadly, like so many women, she was also a victim.

Kennedy’s research into Marty was thorough, shedding light on both her professional and personal life which, at times, was shocking and heartbreaking to read. The fact that she designed the kit still used in collecting evidence to this day is a testament to Marty’s intellectual rigor and progressive mindset. When it was revealed that her male counterparts took credit for it and even had it named in their honor, I was enraged but not surprised. So many sad truths about the justice system were exposed, more specifically regarding how victims of rape were treated by law enforcement, and it left me stunned. It’s no wonder women, even to this day, don’t trust the authorities or prosecute abusers in fear of not being believed. When the author revealed her own story of childhood abuse it added another layer of depth I didn’t expect, but which rounded out the book in a much more personal and authentic way.

5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
For readers who are intrigued by true crime, feminism, and forensics.

This biography/history, plus a dash of memoir, tells the story of how the rape kit was developed. It is something that, after countless Law & Order episodes and true crime podcasts, we take for granted. I was struck by how Marty Goddard, the creator of the kit, as well as others who have aimed to improve it, took a step back from the spotlight in the interest of getting this useful tool out into the hands of investigators and medical professionals. The author focuses not only on Goddard's efforts but also the backlog of kits that has come to light in recent years. I found this book interesting, and I hope that it leads to more advocacy in support of victims and survivors and further improvements in the process.

3.5.

This was a little too all over the place for me. The focus wasn’t solely on Marty or the kit, it kept straying. Which don’t get me wrong everything that was brought up is worth mentioning but it wasn’t the reason I wanted to read this particular book.

Thank you to Vintage for sending this my way!

A book I'd never think to read but really learned and took so much from it.

This piece of investigative journalism delves into the history of the rape kit and it's uncredited inventor - Marty Goddard. The book highlights how the rape kit came to be, including all it took to have the rape kit mainstreamed to be used for forensics.

There is a mix of personal story from the author (trigger warning) as well as the hunt for Marty and the development of the kit. It's very educational but also accessible from the personal experiences shared in the book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Vintage Books for an eARC of this book.

I found this book to be a bit slow but very interesting. As someone with a personal interest in rape kits I was very interested in reading how they came to be. Marty Goddard did such a wonderful thing for rape victims when she determined a way to allow their rapists to be caught.

Amazing read, fascinating to learn more regarding this. Thank you for the advanced copy, history of this subject was interesting.

journalist, survivors, brutalized, scientific-method, science, forensic-science, forensics, historical-places-events, historical-figures, nonfiction, due-diligence, historical-research, abuse, misogyny, triggers*****

I have never been the subject of the physical and emotional scrutiny a woman can be subjected to, but I have worked ER and GYN in an inner-city mission hospital in the 1970s/80s and jails in the 1990s/2000s. Sexual assault is the end game of the objectification of women. Only murder with or without mutilation tops that.
Even when evidence is well collected, there is such a backlog in every state lab that it causes an incredible delay in processing.
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected ebook file from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Vintage via NetGalley. Thank you.
Avail Jan 14, 2025 #TheSecretHistoryOfTheRapeKit by Pagan Kennedy #TrueCrime @AAKnopf @PantheonBooks @IReadVintage #AnchorVintage #Nonfiction #HistoricalForensics #Scientific #Triggers #FemAbuse #Origins

Griping and educational. It is a must-read in today's world. I could not put it down.

Thank you, Netgalley for the ARC.