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We remember feminism of the 1970s without also recalling exactly what women were being militant about: their voices being muffled, their power minimized, their issues ignored.<\/p>\n
Pagan Kennedy\u2019s new book, \u201cThe Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story,\u201d is a disturbing journey back to the bad old days of Chicago a half century ago. And maybe, the way we\u2019re going, a glimpse into our future, too.<\/p>\n
The book begins with the sexual abuse of the author, trauma both specific and universal. \u201cThe warnings of sexual assault carried inside them an even more demoralizing and insidious message: This world is not for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Kennedy settles into the story of Chicagoan Martha \u201cMarty\u201d Goddard, whose life changes after volunteering at a phone hotline for homeless teenagers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just beside myself when I found the extent of the problem,\u201d Goddard said. \u201cThe runaways were pregnant, homeless, suicidal, strung out.\u201d<\/p>\n
She realized she had \u201cstumbled upon a dark and terrible underworld.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police would arrest young women, for solicitation or vagrancy. The abuse that had sent them fleeing into the streets wasn\u2019t considered. \u201cNo one talked about the crimes that had driven those girls out of their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n
A new book explores how a too-often ignored forensic tool was developed in Chicago. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
It was \u201ca culture in which cops played pranks on victims, making them the butt of sick jokes. At least one officer persuaded a woman to strip naked, so that he could photograph her wounds as evidence. He then passed the photos around to his buddies, as if they were porn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Richard J. Daley deployed a taunt when the subject of corruption arose \u2014 \u201cWhere\u2019s your proof?\u201d \u2014 that served double for rape victims. It was her word against his, and everybody knew who was trustworthy, who unreliable.<\/p>\n
The solution was to collect evidence immediately after these crimes, which led to the rape kit, a box filled with swabs, combs and other equipment designed to collect evidence after a woman \u2014 or man; 9% of rape victims are men \u2014 was assaulted.<\/p>\n
Goddard championed the kit for both its practical and ideological value: \u201cIt\u2019s true power came from a new set of ideas,\u201d Kennedy writes. Ideas starting with: What happens to women matters.<\/p>\n
The kit was named, not for Goddard, but for a Chicago police sergeant, Louis Vitullo, and unpacking that fact brings us back \u2014 and maybe forward \u2014 to a world where women carry less authority than men. Having a man\u2019s name made the kit more acceptable to law enforcement that, frankly, couldn\u2019t be bothered investigating sexual assault.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re wondering why this book would snag my attention, it\u2019s because in 2012, then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan called to discuss the state\u2019s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners program, or SANE, training nurses to use these kits.<\/p>\n
The program was a bomb. Of 200 hospitals in the state of Illinois, two participated. Neither were close to Chicago.<\/p>\n
And you want me to write about this? I asked, amazed. Politicians as a rule don\u2019t tout their failures.<\/p>\n
What she wanted, Madigan said, were more participants.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say my story<\/a> changed anything. But it didn\u2019t. In 2018, the Tribune revisited the subject and found scant improvement.<\/p>\n