Criminal - The Kit

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

In the early 1970s, Marty Goddard was worried about the high rates of sexual assault in Chicago. She learned from police that evidence from sexual assault cases often wasn’t collected properly — or at all. “They said, ‘We don’t get evidence.’ And this really kicked everything off.” Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there! Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, FDA approved for over 20 years. So, talk to your specialist to see if Botox Cosmetic is right for you. For full prescribing information, including boxed warning, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. Remember to ask for Botox Cosmetic by name. To see for yourself and learn more, visit BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series

worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Very soon, I get to do my favorite thing.

Go on tour and meet so many of you. This month, Criminal is coming to Austin, Tucson, Boulder, Portland, Oregon, Detroit, Madison, Northampton, and Atlanta. If you didn't get to come and see our 10-year anniversary show earlier this year, this is your last chance. You'll get to hear seven brand-new storiesyear anniversary show earlier this year, this is your last chance. You'll get to hear seven brand new stories, most of which will probably make you laugh. I'll even try to come and say hi at the merch table. Get your tickets while they last at thisiscriminal.com slash live. This episode contains discussion of sexual violence. Please use discretion.

In 1972, a woman named Martha Goddard, she went by Marty, was working for a non-profit foundation in Chicago. She was 31. One day, she was asked if she would join the board of an organization that ran a crisis hotline for young, unhoused people. And I joined their board of directors. I was asked to do that. This is an oral history recording of Marty Goddard from 2003. Part of being a board member was we had to do phone, answer the phones and be trained on that so we'd understand what our staffs went through. She started answering calls on the crisis

hotline. In the early 70s, people often called kids and teenagers living on the streets runaways. But as Marty talked to more and more of them on the phone and got to hear their stories, she realized that there was more going on than most people assumed. That gave me a great foundation for finding out why were these kids leaving? What was the problem? And it was not just runaways, kids who just weren't wanted by their families or guardians, but so many of them had to leave home because they were sexually abused. And I was just beside myself when I found the extent of the problem. They did not run away to be hippies and, you know, kind of join the circus.

They were fleeing unsafe homes. Journalist Pagan Kennedy has researched Marty Goddard's life and work. The general attitude of police departments was that if somebody was sexually assaulted, there was no point in investigating. You could never prove it because the victims were liars. It was just completely the norm to think that way. now see anybody under 18 as being a victim of child abuse if they were sexually exploited. That line didn't exist. If those kids were assaulted or they were fleeing from an abuser, they would be blamed. Paken Kennedy writes that in the early 1970s, people believed that child sexual abuse was very rare.

A psychiatric textbook said that incest only happened in one in every one million families, and that when it happened, the children had often, quote, initiated it. So there was really this attitude that these girls who were ending up on the street, they were a criminal element, and they would often be taken off the street by cops. And then if they ended up in the juvenile detention center, they could be assaulted again. And Marty was just so upset with how the police were coping with this, where these girls were sort of treated as criminals, and this complete unspoken world of child abuse that was going on. Marty Goddard wanted to do something. She started introducing herself to what were then called anti-rape activists in Chicago. She met a woman named Cynthia Geary,

who at the time worked for the ACLU. Marty was a person who got outraged when she encountered injustice. Cynthia Geary. And so she kind of recruited me, I would say. Both Marty and Cynthia often traveled for work. Every city we went to, we would walk in cold to the local police department. And we would say, we'd like to know, we'd like to talk to someone who could tell us

what's happening in your city and state regarding victims of rape. How are they handled? And back in those days, the doors were open. So we amassed information, then we'd take it all down, and we'd start writing things. Well, it looks like it's because of this or this or this or this,

and here's what Iowa's doing, and here's what New York's doing, and here's so forth. They compared their findings from other states with what was going on in Chicago. It wasn't just the young people that Marty had been talking to. The problem was much broader, and women all over the city were reporting that they were afraid. One activist wrote that sexual assault in Chicago was, quote,

epidemic, and that it was, quote, not a city you wanted to venture out into after dark. There was suddenly this kind of awakening in around 1974 where a lot of female activists were calling for something to be done about the huge amount of sexual assault in the city at that time. So Marnie Goddard got involved with that. In 1973, only about a tenth of sexual assault cases in Chicago were reported, and only about a tenth of those cases went to trial. Few perpetrators ever ended up in prison.

One 1973 police training manual from Chicago read, quote, many rape complaints are not legitimate. It is unfortunate that many women will claim they have been raped in order to get revenge against an unfaithful lover. Police officers would routinely ask survivors of an assault what they've been wearing and whether they might have provoked an attack. One day, a group of about 70 women marched into the office of the state's attorney, a man named Bernard Carey, to protest the state's failure to prosecute rapists. They posted messages on the walls of his office. One of them read,

Wanted, Bernard Carey, for aiding and abetting rapists. And then, Marty Goddard decided to try to talk to the state's attorney herself. I went cold into the state's attorney's office and I asked to see him. And don't ask to this day how I got in, but I did. And he said, look, we've got a problem. I don't know what the answer is, but how would you like to kind of work with us to work it out? I said, great, but we need the cops in on this. So Marty Goddard met with a police sergeant and then with the president of the hospital council so she could assemble a group to investigate.

I said, give me your best people, two of your best people. The two best police officers, the two best best people, two of your best people. The two best police officers, the two best prosecutors, and the two best hospital people. Just, and make it nurses, thank you. So they did, and we tore the issue apart. The problem was, we weren't able to apprehend very many people, and when you did get somebody in custody, you couldn't prove your case. Marty Goddard went to the crime lab of the Chicago Police Department

and asked to talk to every single employee at every level about rape cases. She wanted to know what evidence they collected. And said, what is it that you people need? Well, nobody had ever come in there and asked them before. We got every, in one day we were so overloaded with information, we didn't have a tape recorder, so we had to scramble and take notes. And basically here's what they told us.

They said, we don't get evidence. And this really kicked everything off. Marty Goddard was told that many of the cases were so-called he-said-she-said situations. The account of a victim wasn't enough. In the old days, it was the victim's fault, okay, or it was consensual, or okay, she may have been raped, but it wasn't me. And then I thought, well, if what I'm hearing is correct, you all don't have any evidence, so how can we prosecute successfully? Even if you arrest somebody.

So, then what do you do to solve that problem? Marty Goddard had an idea. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Marty Goddard spent more time with the employees of the Chicago Crime Lab. And she also tried to find out what happened when someone who had experienced a sexual assault got to a hospital. What she learned from all these different interviews and conversations she had was that when, and I'm saying a woman because at the time there was very little awareness of sexual assault that happens to men. Generally, she would go into the hospital or the police would take her to the hospital. And then she's taken in for an examination. The staff is very focused on just treating her and not on collecting evidence.

So they would take off all her clothes. They might cut open her clothes. And so if there were stab marks or whatever, they wouldn't capture any of that. They would sort of make an attempt to take some swabs, but nobody had taught them how to take swabs in a way that would work for the crime lab. So they might stick slides together in a way that everything would get sort of mushed together and the evidence would be no good. So the evidence that they collected, nobody had told them how to do it the right way. And so it usually would not be in a state that was very usable for the crime lab. Even if the evidence was collected at the hospital, Pagan Kennedy says police could still elect not to look at it

if an officer didn't believe a victim. Ultimately, the decision belongs to the police officer or detective, and if this woman seems like she's, they called it crying rape, if she's just, you know, trying to get back at her boyfriend, or she's a prostitute, or she's whatever. For any reason, you don't really have to collect the evidence. And that was very much the attitude. When a survivor of a sexual assault was taken to the hospital, there were very few systems

in place. If your clothes were collected as evidence, the hospital may not have any others for you. Here's Marty Goddard. If you don't have replacement clothes and you're going to take the patient's underwear and jewelry and shoes and nylons and slip and their dress and their coat in the winter in Chicago and put them in bags, turn them over to the crime lab. Well, excuse me, but what is she supposed to go home in? And I'm telling you for sure, not only did I see this, but I've heard too many horror stories around the country. Victims were sent home in those little paper slippers, and they were sent home with a paper or cloth, hopefully cloth gown, one in the front facing front and the other tying around the back.

That's what they got sent home in. And they were put in marked cars like the Chicago PD or the Sheriff's Department or whatever and driven home. Now, gee, don't you think your neighbors are going to wonder why you're in a police car and why you're dressed in paper slippers and two surgical gowns? Well, of course. And not everybody wanted to tell their mom or their husband or their roommate that they had just been raped. So a lot of people wouldn't call. She had a very good idea of what was going wrong, of the way evidence was being thrown up, out, or never collected at all,

the bias that the police departments had against the victims, of the abuse of victims, and of just the pure incompetence. Pagan Kennedy. She was aware of the whole range of problems that were preventing sexual assault evidence from being collected in a scientific manner. Marty Goddard wanted to change the way that evidence was collected in hospitals and make it clear to police officers, hospital workers, and crime lab technicians, what they each needed to do. She got to work creating what she called an evidence collection kit.

She had a very clear idea of what would be in it, and it would be, you know, swabs, it would be evidence envelopes. This is pre-DNA, so it's pretty simple. It's not high-tech by any means. The rape evidence collection kit would include things like nail clippers, slides, and a comb for collecting hair. had in it was that it would have a place where the people in the hospital who did the forensic exam, they would sign off on it. The kit would include a sign-off sheet and even a pencil. And then it would go to the crime lab and whoever opened the kit would sign off. And so the kit would, at every stage, there'd be somebody taking responsibility

for it. We'll be right back. Thank you. as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. on Apple Podcasts. productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series,

Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Marty Goddard was born in 1941 and grew up in a suburb near Detroit. When she was young, she became passionate about racial equality and women's rights. Marty clashed with her father as a teenager and tried to run away from home. Pagan Kennedy says she thinks that's what made Marty so concerned with family violence. Marty lived in New York City for a while, working as a secretary, before she moved to Chicago and started her non-profit job. She was a great storyteller, and she could bring the issues that she was interested in to life.

Marty did not have a college degree. Cynthia Geary. Marty was kind of a paradox in that she was so effective socially, but was terrified of any kind of public speaking. And that's why she recruited me. She needed a person to go up to the microphone. That wasn't her calling. Her calling was to go and meet people that were experiencing something, getting to know them, and then sharing their stories one-on-one. Marty Goddard had been told that if she wanted her evidence collection kit to become a reality, she'd need the support of a man named Louis Vitullo, the head of Chicago Police Department's Microscope Unit. My memory of it is that she went in unannounced.

So she walks in with her plan for a rape kit. Now, Lou Vitullo is kind of a gruff person. He does not think about what he's saying before he does it often. Basically, he kicked her out. Marty called me after this happened. I didn't even know she was going to go try to do this. I probably would have tried to dissuade her from trying. But she called me and told me about it. I'm trying to convey some of her raw humor.

Because she was funny, wasn't she? Yeah, very funny. And it was kind of like, oh, she said, well, that didn't go so well. But one day, Louis Vitulo suddenly called Marty Goddard and said he had something to show her. So she went to his office. It turned out Vitulo had studied her plans and had created a prototype of Marty Goddard's rape kit. But the city wasn't going to pay to produce these kits, so Marty Goddard cut back her hours at her day job

and started a non-profit to try to make them herself. She needed money, but she says prospective funders didn't want to go near it. All they did was want to fund the, no offense to the groups, the YWCA and the Girl Scouts. And that's it. That was the end of their obligation for women's and girls' programs. Most of the foundation and corporate people were male. And they held the big money. So they held the purse strings.

And it wasn't loosening up. They didn't get it. They didn't understand. And I understand because that was my dad's generation. So they didn't under, you didn't say the word rape. Okay. Not in public and not in private. You didn't say, talk about that stuff.

So the money wasn't going there. Nobody would give me the components, the combs and the slides and the swabs and the folders and the paper bags and the printing materials and the box and the evidence tape. They wouldn't give it to me. And I didn't have any money. Not enough to fund that up front. She didn't know what to do. So she talked to a friend named Margaret Standish, who worked for the Playboy Foundation.

In 1965, Hugh Hefner created the foundation to support causes that he personally believed in. And I said, Margaret, I'm in trouble here and I can't get this product manufactured. Nobody will send me anything. And they gave me $10,000. And I took a lot of flack from the women's movement, but too bad. I got to tell you what, I said, if it was Penhouse or Hustler, no. But Playboy, please give me a break. There was an enormous building in the middle of Chicago with this neon sign on it that said Playboy.

Playboy was making money hand over fist. It had its clubs with the bunnies and it had magazines. It was this huge empire. Hugh Hefner was very committed to giving money to civil liberty causes, especially free speech causes. But Hefner really saw sexual assault as an issue related to sexual freedom because if women were afraid of being assaulted, of course, they couldn't be sexually liberated, and that meant men couldn't be as sexually liberated. So he was actually very interested in helping victims of assault and getting this to be a

conversation. Marty Goddard now had the components to put together 10,000 rape kits that she would distribute across Chicago as part of a pilot program. But she was short on staff that could assemble the boxes. Her friend at the Playboy Foundation, Margaret, had an idea. She said, I've got this great idea, Marty. You're not going to believe this. I said, what is it? She said, well, everybody just loves the Playboy Bunny. And they just all the, we have all these older women, senior citizens, and they want to do something. So we're going to provide the

sandwiches and the coffee and the juice, and we're going to invite them up to the Playboy offices. And we're going to give you a huge room with all these assembly tables, you know, folding tables. We're going to have the components shipped to Playboy. And we're going to set everything out. And you come in and decide how you want it done. Train them. And they'll do it. And that's what they did.

Well, they were so excited. There were so many people up there. And the word got around. Guess where we get to go today? And they give us the stuff to eat and everything. And, well, everybody wanted to come today? And they give us the stuff to eat and everything. And, well, everybody wanted to come downtown Chicago then after they heard that. They called the kits the Vitulo kit, after Sergeant Louis Vitulo from Chicago's police department.

The rape kit was branded in Vitulo's name for a long time. You know how Marty felt about that? I think she thought it was a very smart thing to do. I think she may have even done it. She knew that his support was critical. And it wasn't just because he was a man. It was because he directed the forensics department. So having his name on it made it recognizable as something to take seriously in the city of Chicago. An article in the Chicago Police Star headlined,

Vitulo's Rape Evidence Kit is an Aid to Victims, featured a photo of Vitulo holding the kit. On September 14, 1978, Marty Goddard's rape kit became available in hospital emergency rooms for the first time. One newspaper article called the pilot program she had designed in Chicago, quote, the first of its type in the nation. The kit included a checklist for medical examiners and detailed instructions on how to seal and secure the evidence they'd collected.

The medical examiner was instructed to hand the patient a card, included in the box, which had information about where to find counseling. By the end of 1978, staff from 72 hospitals had participated in a training seminar created by Marty Goddard's nonprofit. The seminar included presentations on forensic science and victim trauma. There was a lot that wasn't in that cardboard box. The idea that the hospital staff had to be trained, The police department had to be trained. They had to be brought together in training sessions to work together.

And then the hospital staff, if they were going to go to court, they had to be trained to talk about how they had collected evidence before a jury. The evidence collected from these new rape kits made its way into courtrooms. What really made the difference was that they were getting a person in a lab coat, whether it was a doctor or nurse, to stand up in front of the jury and say, here's exactly what I did to collect information

from the survivor, from this victim. Here's the swabs. Here's the photographs of her injuries. Here's what I documented. And instead of having the victim herself speaking up, you see a person in a lab coat who has scientifically collected evidence. It was a system for collecting scientific evidence and making sure that evidence was good. But it was also a piece of theater because in front of the jury, you have a person in a lab coat. That person in the white

coat can tell the story of this woman who's assaulted and be believed. It's a theater of belief, whereas juries might be very, very hostile to, especially if a woman's making an accusation against a more powerful man, she would not be believed. And so if you take that all and you put that in a white coat and you have a kit, it really takes the burden of belief

off of the survivor herself. And unfortunately, it was a workaround for a very broken social fabric of belief. In 1979, a 28-year-old man was sentenced to 60 years in prison after abducting and raping a bus driver in Chicago. Marty Goddard's kit had been instrumental in securing the conviction. Marty Goddard said that in the early 1970s, the media would hardly ever write about sexual assault. But that gradually started changing.

The media now starts catching up. And gee, it isn't so taboo. You can actually write about this stuff. And you had to educate them. They didn't know anything. They didn't even know what the legal definition in their state was for rape. She says that one day she picked up a copy of the Chicago Tribune. There was this big article in it that said, last night, a blonde haired, 23, 25 year old waitress at the blank who lived on the block,

2300 block of blank got raped. I nearly lost my mind. I called Cindy and I said, we've got to meet with these people. So we walked into the Tribune. We wanted to meet with the editor, and we did. He had his whole staff in there. And we sat down, and we were very calm. And we said, this is why we're having a problem. Here's what the article said. But we didn't say the name.

I said, listen to me, 23-year-old blonde waitress, and you named her place, which was right around the corner from me, so all I had to do was walk up to that restaurant, I'd know who it was, you know, when she came to work. And I said, it wouldn't matter if you gave her name now. At first they were very defensive, and I got to tell you, they apologized and never did it again.

Today the names and details of survivors of sexual assault are generally not printed. One by one. Do you see how long this can take? One incident by one incident by one incident. It took forever. She said that one day, a colleague showed her a greeting card she'd found in a store. And it said, help stop rape on the front of the card. Open it up, and it says, say yes. I just cannot tell you. These were in the Hallmark stores, pardon me. So I sat down, and I wrote a letter to the company, and I didn't threaten a lawsuit.

I didn't call them names. I just said, look, this is really offensive, and I'd like to meet with you. Do you understand what's happening? You guys, I'm sure, think it's funny, but it's not funny. One day, Cynthia Geary received a call from Marty. She knew Marty had been on vacation in Hawaii, and Cynthia remembers assuming Marty was calling to tell her about it. And I said, how was it?

And there was a silence. And then she just said, I was raped. And I was raped. I was shocked. She never talked to me about the details. And then she had to go back and talk about sexual assault every day in her work. Yes. I mean, that is all a mystery. She was able to not only lead training classes,

but to do it on a topic that most people would fumble around, trying to come up with the language. And yet she kept her sense of humor, too, while she did it. I don't know how she held it all together. Marty Goddard kept working. She wanted her rape kit in hospitals across the country. And gradually, that started happening. As Chicago created this system in the late 1970s and early 80s, it was getting national attention, and this idea was really catching on. Marty was constantly traveling to train people. She once joked that she didn't know how her cat survived those years. She was always on the road.

And then, in 1983, Marty Goddard felt that the rape kit was so widely used that her organization's work was done. Imagine how many years it took us to go state's attorney to state's attorney to cop to to detective, to deputy, to doctor, to pediatrician, to nurse, to nurse practitioner. It took forever. But I felt driven. I felt that after seeing all the kids and the adults and other experiences in my life,

I felt absolutely driven. I felt I had to save the world, and I was going to start with Chicago. In 1983, a medical company took over production of the kits. And by 1987, almost a dozen companies were producing them for hospitals all over the country. We'll be right back. Thank you. We are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Are you looking to eat healthier, but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories?

You don't need to wait for the new year to start fresh. New year, new me? How about same year, new me? You just need a different approach. According to Noom, losing weight has less to do with discipline and more to do with psychology. Noom is the weight loss management program that focuses on the science behind food cravings and building sustainable eating habits. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. Noom takes into Thank you. build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. And since everyone's journey is different, so are your daily lessons. They're personalized to help you reach your goal. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com.

In 2009, prosecutors entered a warehouse in Detroit. The local police department used it as a storage facility. At the warehouse, they discovered more than 10,000 rape kits, which had been collected but never tested. Some of the untested kits dated back to the mid-1980s, back when Marty's idea for the kit was finally catching on. They just put them in this abandoned, falling-down warehouse. Dr. Julie Valentine is a forensic nurse and a professor who studies sexual violence.

So then it was like, wait. If they found all of these rape kits that were just being stored in Detroit, what about other areas of the country? It turned out lots of other cities and states had big backlogs of rape kits. There were hundreds of thousands of them. The state I live in, in Utah, when I started working in 2006, I started asking, so what happens with all these rape kits we collect?

And the answer I got from everyone was, we don't know. And when you think about it, I mean, is that insane that we weren't tracking this? I'm an old ICU nurse. In ICU, you track everything about your patients. And here we're collecting evidence from these violent crimes from people and not tracking what happens with this evidence. So nationally, there was a big push on, let's find out all across the country what the backlog is. There have been a lot of explanations offered over the years, including that some police departments don't prioritize sexual assault cases,

either because of bias or a lack of training. Often the problem is attributed to a, quote, lack of resources. Testing a rape kit typically costs between $1,000 and $1,500. Paken Kennedy writes that funding has always been a problem, ever since Marty Goddard had to fundraise to get the kits produced. Sometimes, survivors of sexual assault have paid to have their own rape kits tested, and non-profit organizations have raised millions of dollars to test kits. In 2016, the Justice Department announced a new $45 million program

to reduce the number of untested rape kits in the U.S. and improve police training. The next step then was to say, hey, we can't let this happen anymore. So many areas of the country, many states, have now passed laws mandating the submission and testing of all sexual assault kits. Dr. Julie Valentine says systems have been developed to track each kit. In a study published in 2016,

Dr. Valentine sampled testing sites in Utah and found that only 38% of kits were submitted for testing. Now we've gone from 38% to 99%, which is awesome. There's now a specialized field of nurses who care for patients who've experienced trauma. Forensic nurse examiners. They will care for patients through a sexual assault medical forensic examination with always the first focus being on the patient, holistic care of the patient to hopefully begin their recovery. Secondary is collecting evidence in a sexual assault kit. And so it was really the nursing influence along with the kit that created the

changes that we have today. Dr. Julie Valentine says forensic nursing has existed since the 1990s, when a group of nurses across different states were unhappy with how sexual for victims of rape and domestic violence. When a survivor reports a sexual assault, we have national protocols that guide the examination. First of all, immediately they should have their trauma acknowledged. They should be able to be placed in a private room. An advocate should be called to respond. And along with that, then a forensic nursing team will be notified if there is a forensic nursing team in that area. If there's no forensic nursing team,

Dr. Julie Valentine says the exam will be done by an emergency room physician or nurse. The examination should be completely the patient's choice. And I'm going to switch now to the term of patient rather than survivor, because in my world, they are my patients. And sexual assault and rape completely take away an individual's autonomy and control. And one of the first things that we do when we go in to see a patient is try to restore that. And so we give patients choices. The choices range from receiving resources, receiving medication to prevent sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy, and that's it. Or they can receive all those resources and also have evidence collected if they report within the time frame of that jurisdiction, which should be at least up to

five days after the sexual assault. And with this evidence collection, they can choose to have something called a restricted kit or a non-restricted kit. So a restricted kit means that it should be held for up to 20 years. Because so many times after trauma, patients just aren't quite sure what they want to do. Remember that most sexual assaults are committed by someone they know. And so giving them choices, letting them decide if they want certain parts of evidence collected, not certain parts, if they want photos taken, not photos. That's a really, really important part of the sexual assault medical forensic examination. Marty Goddard's original rape kit was a kind of a small cardboard box that had a comb and slides.

How has the actual rape kit changed and evolved over time? The sexual assault kit in some ways has changed a lot. The outcomes in some ways have not changed. Now we collect evidence with the focus on obtaining DNA. Our abilities to develop meaningful DNA data have gone from when the DNA first started, you really needed about a quarter size of bodily fluids. To now, helpful DNA profiles can be developed from just a few cells. So that then brings up the additional challenge, since the DNA testing and interpretation is so much better, that we have to be very cautious about making sure that we have a very clean environment and do not introduce any extra DNA. So, examiners should be wearing masks now.

Obviously, we're going to be wearing gloves when we collect. But now the kit consists of swabs with the focus of finding DNA that is not the patient's or victim's. There's now also a suspect evidence collection kit, where DNA can be collected from a suspect in a sexual assault case. And today, medical examiners can even collect what is called touch DNA. Dr. Julie Valentine says touch DNA can make it possible to collect evidence in, for example, groping assault cases. In the United States, the FBI manages a DNA database, CODIS, where DNA profiles of perpetrators and people who've been arrested are stored. Then you have the capabilities of linking cases.

That is huge. So that has helped substantially. But I think what hasn't, sadly sadly changed as much as we need it to is when Marty started out and developed these kits, the focus was to improve the outcomes for these victims, to improve the prosecution of these cases. And that's where we still see a huge lag. Scientifically, forensically, wow, we have made huge strides. But when we look at what's the outcome, are we truly making a difference? What's happening in these cases? And sadly, we still see very low prosecution. I mean, why? Just sorry to interrupt.

Yeah. I mean, the evidence is there. What is the problem? So there's several problems on this low prosecution. I think we still have a very prevalent rape myth that there's a lot of false reporting in rape. And when people think like that, then what ends up happening is you have a victim who doesn't report because they feel like no one's going to believe me. I'm going to be questioned. I'm going to be seen as, well, what's wrong with her? Oh, was she, you know, there's still a lot of victim blaming. Oh, she was with that guy. Oh, she was out till two in the morning. Oh, she invited him to her apartment. What did she

expect? And when people think like that and assign blame to the victim for this and then question the victim's motivation. We have very low reporting rates, but then that also affects how law enforcement handles these cases. In many instances, not all, how prosecution handles these cases and what a jury decides. Many victims will have a sexual assault kit collected. They'll want to talk to law enforcement. But when they talk to law enforcement, if they are met with any questions that imply that, hey, you had something to do with this or you share some blame in this

or, hey, you need to know this is going to be really hard and you're going to be dragged through the mud. Are you sure you really want to do that? We found that a high percentage of victims say, you know what, I'm done. I don't want to do this. That is the area that is really, in my opinion, the next frontier that we need to address. Battling it just like Marty was battling it. Absolutely. We need everyone. We truly need everyone, men and women. This is not a women's issue, right? When we say it's a women's issue, we diminish the impact. We also diminish the many men that are impacted by sexual violence. This is a societal first step in bringing perpetrators to justice. But we need the buy-in of everyone to actually make that happen. In 2022, the Smithsonian acquired one of Marty Goddard's original kits for its permanent collections.

In a statement about the acquisition, the museum wrote that the kit, quote, continues to stand as an enduring and powerful innovation today, as a sexual assault is attempted every 68 seconds in the United States. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, Sam Kim, and Megan Kinane. This episode was mixed by Emma Munger.

Engineering by Ross Henry. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. Thanks to the oral history of the Crime Victims Assistance Field Video and Audio Archive at the University of Akron Archives for letting us use Marty Goddard's oral history interview. You can watch the full interview with Marty on the university's website and on YouTube.

We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at Criminal underscore Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults.

Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox cosmetic if you have a skin infection. Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome in medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com or call 877-351-0300. See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things. And it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system. You can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new, reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks.

Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation.