Marty Goddard dreamed up a new crime-solving tool—a kit that could help rape survivors fight for justice. This thrilling investigation tells the story of the troubled, heroic woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.

"Astonishing . . . Marty Goddard takes her rightful place as a visionary thanks to Kennedy’s relentless investigation.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of  No Visible Bruises

In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool—the rape kit—and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work.   

When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.

"A thrilling, novelistic work of journalism that uncovers the remarkable and hidden story of Marty Goddard, the woman who invented the rape kit, changed the course of how we treat sexual assault forever, and then vanished from the record. The idea came to Marty Goddard in 1971. She was working at a crisis hotline, haunted by the stories of survivors and plagued by two principle questions: Why were so many predators getting away with crimes? And, how do we stop them? In the coming years, Marty set off a massive campaign that lobbied to have sexual assault treated and investigated as the crime that it is. By creating the first rape kit, she revolutionized forensics. The kit would live on as one of the most powerful and effective tools for bringing perpetrators to justice. Marty, however, and any record of her, simply disappeared. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles the story of one journalist's mission to uncover the story and woman behind an invention that transformed the lives of women the country over. As Pagan Kennedy peels back the layers behind the history of the kit and Marty's life, she falls into a deeper and deeper obsession. As she pursues this overlooked but critical story from our past, she dives into the inequities built into our patent system and our understanding of technological progress, the problematic and gendered history of forensics, and sexual forensics in particular, the misogyny that runs rampant in police departments, the legacy of Marty's invention and the failings that persist in how we prosecute rape. And, as Pagan unearths who Marty really was, and what happened to her, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault, and how one forgotten woman's legacy could have saved her, as it has so many"--