Photo credit: National Museum of American History
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum mark the ending of Sexual Assault Awareness Month this April by announcing the joint acquisition for the Smithsonian’s permanent collections of the “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit for Sexual Assault Examination,” the innovation that helped accelerate successful investigation and prosecution of sexual assault in the United States and whose influence continues to this day.
Martha “Marty” Goddard (1941–2015) generated the idea for the kit between 1972 and 1978 when she worked as a women’s rights advocate and founded the Citizens Committee for Victim Assistance in Chicago. Goddard understood the pain and stigma surrounding rape and realized that thousands of sexual assault cases had low prosecution rates because there was no standardized procedure for collecting and preserving evidence. Along with colleagues, she undertook a research and development process that involved interviewing policymakers, law enforcement agents, attorneys and hospital workers in a quest to understand how survivors were treated and how evidence was collected. Her goal was to design a new system to increase the probability of suspects and criminals being identified and prosecuted.
Goddard envisioned a kit that standardized the process of collecting and preserving evidence that would contain all the tools for evidence collection in one box and provide instructions for collection, documentation and counseling resources for survivors. She presented her design for a kit to Louis Vitullo (1924–2006), a Chicago police sergeant in the city’s crime lab. Soon after the meeting, he introduced the “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit for Sexual Assault Examination.” Goddard advocated for the kit’s implementation and worked to distribute it into the public safety system.
In researching the history of the kit, the Smithsonian curatorial team considered the significance, impact and historical contributions of the object. Versions of these kits, commonly known as “rape kits,” are standard protocol in hospitals across the nation and the world. Goddard’s work continues to stand as an enduring and powerful innovation today, as a sexual assault is attempted every 68 seconds in the U.S.
“Sexual assault is among the most frequently occurring crimes in our country while also being the most underreported and prosecuted, and probably the least understood” said Katherine Ott, curator of medical history at the National Museum of American History. “This kit prompts us to link a range of histories, and with it we can expand upon and connect what we already know about women’s activism, forensic science and gender relations to the history of sexual violence and our cultural reluctance to talk about it.”
“This kit is constructed of simple, familiar materials that become a powerful instrument of change when assembled together with instructions,” said Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. “Bringing this kit into the collection of the national design museum challenges an enduring perception that design is solely a product created by an expert for a consumer, rather it advocates design as a means of social transformation available to anyone irrespective of formal training.”
Although the kit is currently not on display, it is available online.
Republished courtesy of the National Museum of American History.