Martha "Marty" Goddard (c. 1941 – 2015) was an American victims' advocate who was instrumental in developing the

rape test kit A rape kit or rape test kit is a package of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault. The evidence collected from the victim can aid the criminal rape investigation an ...

, used to methodically collect forensic evidence from survivors of rape.

Life

In the early 1970s, Goddard worked as a victims' advocate in Chicago, where an estimated 16,000 women were raped each year and police often would not believe victims. Only a tenth of this number were reported, and they rarely resulted in imprisonment of the attacker. She learned from the police that the evidence collected in hospitals from rape victims was often incomplete or poorly gathered. To improve the chances of offenders being identified and sentenced, she developed the concept and organization of a rape kit, a standardized way of collecting and preserving forensic evidence from victims of rape. She brought this idea to Louis R. Vitullo, who worked in the Chicago police crime lab. At first, he yelled at her and rejected her idea, according to Goddard's colleague Cynthia Gehrie, but then he proceeded to develop a kit similar to Goddard's design, taking personal credit for the invention. In the mid-1970s, Goddard founded the

Citizens Committee for Victim Assistance Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

, which advocated and sought funding for the distribution of rape kits; much of the initial funding came from the Playboy Foundation. Goddard continued to advocate for the rights of sexual assault victims through the 1980s, but developed a problem with alcohol and lived her later years in obscurity in Arizona. She died in 2015.

Legacy

In the years after its development, the Vitullo Kit was introduced as a tool collect evidence at over a hundred hospitals in Illinois by the Citizens Committee for Victim Assistance. One of these early Vitullo Kits was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution.Antonia Mufarech
Invented by a Woman Activist, an Early 1970s Rape Kit Arrives at the Smithsonian
''Smithsonian Magazine'', 9 May 2022Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit for Sexual Assault Examination
at

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

web site

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goddard, Marty 1940s births 2015 deaths Sexual abuse victim advocates