Redesigning the Sexual Assault Kit, June 5, 2025 3:00PM
Item details
Date
June 5, 2025 3:00PM
Name
Redesigning the Sexual Assault Kit
Description
Please be advised this program contains content related to sexual assault.
In 2021, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the National Museum of American History, with support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, co-acquired Martha “Marty” Goddard’s “Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit for Sexual Assault Examination.” Goddard engaged a community of collaborators between 1972 and 1978 in Chicago, Il to design a standardized kit that would contain all the tools for evidence collection in one box and provide instructions for collection, documentation, and counseling resources for survivors. More than 40 years later, versions of this same kit are commonly used around the United States to process and prosecute sexual assaults, still the most underreported and occurring crime in the nation.
In this roundtable discussion, experts from around the country will discuss Goddard’s innovative kit, which helped accelerate successful investigation and prosecution of sexual assault in the United States, as well as strategies for improving the design of the kit. A new generation of advocates, policy makers, and technicians have been calling for adaptations of the kit’s design to expand its approach to trauma informed-care supportive of all those impacted by sexual assault; standardized components; and technologies to improve transparency around processing.