In the mid-1970s, a Chicago-based survivor advocate named Martha Goddard set out to solve a problem no one in law enforcement wanted to talk about: sexual assault evidence was being collected inconsistently, preserved poorly, and rarely led to prosecution. The tool she developed — now known as the rape kit — became one of the most consequential forensic innovations in modern criminal justice, and it started not in a crime lab, but in a teen crisis center on the South Side of Chicago.
At a glance
- Rape kit origin: Martha Goddard, a sexual assault survivor and founder of Chicago’s Citizens Committee for Victim Assistance, researched and proposed the standardized evidence collection kit in the mid-1970s after recognizing that inconsistent protocols were letting offenders go free.
- Rapid adoption: First used in September 1978 C.E. across 26 Cook County hospital emergency rooms, the kit spread to 215 hospitals across Illinois within two years — and reached New York City by 1982 C.E.
- Global reach: As of 2016 C.E., more than 700 Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner programs use standardized rape kit protocols across the United States, Canada, and Australia, with programs also established in the United Kingdom and Japan.
What Goddard saw that others missed
Working through a Chicago teen crisis center, Goddard became acutely aware of how rarely sexual assault cases ended in prosecution. The problem wasn’t only cultural indifference, though that was real. It was procedural. Evidence collected after an assault was inconsistent from hospital to hospital, often handled without proper protocols, and frequently inadmissible by the time a case reached court.
Goddard responded by doing what no one had done before: she consulted medical professionals, forensic scientists, law enforcement officials, and legal scholars to design a standardized collection process from the ground up. The result was a compact kit — a cardboard box containing swabs, microscope slides, a small comb, collection bags, and instructions — that gave anyone performing a post-assault exam a reliable, reproducible protocol to follow.
To fund production of the kits, Goddard drew on an unlikely source. Through her friendship with businesswoman Christie Hefner, she secured support from the Playboy Foundation. It was an unconventional partnership, but Goddard was focused on outcomes, not optics.
From Chicago to the national standard
The kit was first put into use in September 1978 C.E., when 26 Cook County hospital emergency rooms adopted it as standard practice. The uptake was fast. Less than two years later, 215 hospitals across Illinois were using the same protocol.
New York City adopted the system in 1982 C.E. In 1984 C.E., Goddard presented the Chicago pilot project at an FBI conference. The response from federal agencies was immediate: the Department of Justice funded Goddard to travel the country, helping other states launch their own rape kit programs. A local innovation built on one woman’s direct experience of institutional failure had become a national model.
The kit was widely known for years as the “Vitullo kit,” after Chicago crime lab microanalyst Louis Vitullo, who contributed to its design. Goddard’s foundational role — proposing, researching, and funding the kit — was often underacknowledged in press coverage of the era. That has since been corrected in the historical record, though it is a reminder of how frequently the contributions of women, and especially survivor-advocates, are attributed elsewhere.
The science behind the standard
What makes a rape kit forensically valuable is its comprehensiveness. A kit collects swabs, clothing fibers, hair, saliva, blood, and biological material — all packaged individually to prevent cross-contamination. The physical exam begins with the survivor disrobing over butcher paper to capture any trace evidence that might otherwise be lost. Every step follows a documented chain of custody.
DNA evidence collected through these kits can identify offenders, reveal serial offenders by matching DNA across cases, and exonerate people who have been wrongly accused. The kit doesn’t just build a case — it can close cases, and it can free innocent people.
Specialized nurses known as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) now perform most of these exams in the United States and Canada, trained specifically in forensic evidence collection and trauma-informed care. The SANE model, introduced in the 1970s and expanded steadily since, now encompasses more than 700 programs across three countries.
The unfinished work
The existence of a standardized kit did not, by itself, guarantee justice. For decades, hundreds of thousands of rape kits sat unprocessed in police storage — collected from survivors, then shelved. The rape kit backlog became one of the most visible systemic failures in U.S. criminal justice, and advocacy organizations like the Joyful Heart Foundation have spent years pushing states to test kits, set processing deadlines, and create survivor tracking systems.
Progress on the backlog has accelerated. States including Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and Colorado have passed legislation requiring mandatory processing timelines and dedicated lab funding. RAINN estimates that improved kit processing has contributed to higher identification rates for serial offenders — one of the clearest arguments for treating the rape kit not just as a collection tool, but as an ongoing investment in public safety.
Still, the work is uneven. Backlog clearance varies significantly by state and by jurisdiction within states. Survivor awareness of tracking systems remains low in many areas, limiting their impact. The kit Goddard built is powerful — but only when fully used.
What began with one survivor’s determination to make the system work has become the global infrastructure for forensic sexual assault investigation. That is not a small thing. It is a reminder that the clearest path from structural failure to structural reform often runs through the people who have lived the failure firsthand.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Rape kit — Wikipedia
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
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- The Good News for Humankind archive on justice
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