Tess Little

Tess Little is working on a history of women’s liberation and a novel.

Nutshell Crime Scenes: The Rape Kit

Tess Little, 20 November 2025

Therape kit is a cardboard box containing ordinary items anyone might own: envelopes, combs, swabs, nail clippers. But the packaging together of these things in Chicago in the 1970s enabled the standardisation of evidence collection following a sexual assault, greatly increasing the likelihood of prosecution. At the time, US state laws tended to define rape as something that occurs when...

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