The Geopolitics of "Rape Kit" Protocols

Historical Problems in Translation as Humanitarian Medicine Meets International Law

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3924740
AutoresJ Morse (0009-0004-9200-7943, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume36
Páginas200-218
Data de publicação2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoOsiris (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/713425
OpenAlexW3186121769
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas24

This article contributes to historiographies of forensic medicine by examining late twentieth-century women’s rights activism for new clinical standards on medical forensic exams for sexual assault (commonly known as “rape kits”). I argue that three features of these exams distinguish new standards of care from older practices in forensic medicine: the addition of specialized medical care to evidence-collection routines; attention to psychological trauma; and the creation of specific protocols to standardize, professionalize, and guide routine administration of the exam. To illustrate this shift, I follow “rape kit” protocols that emerged within nursing in the United States beginning in the 1970s, to their uptake and codification in international guidelines, to more recent attempts to adapt them for use in conflict zones. New clinical guidelines transformed the “rape kit” into an assemblage of instruments, medical routines, and new ways of thinking about sexual assault. The rape kit assemblage simultaneously became a traveling technology of care and a technology of governance and law. In practice, however, as new standards were implemented more widely, tensions between medical care and evidence collection emerged. At the intersection of law and medicine, distinct logics and assumptions came together, positioning not only medical and legal professionals, but also patients, in the unenviable liminal zone in which care and justice met and produced friction. This comes across clearly from an analysis of their use in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where mass rape had taken place. In this context, political turmoil and war conditioned the delivery of health care and, by extension, the liminal zone between medicine and law that standards for post-rape care occupy. Investigations of mass rape threatened to contravene confidentiality of medical records and expose health workers and patients to retaliation from suspects, renewing controversies surrounding the feasibility of aligning the institutional logics of medicine and law in this way

Criminology · Democracy · Economic Justice · Health care · Political science · Politics · Sexual violence · Sociology · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Psychology