Description
Book SynopsisIn 1984, the Sexual Assault Evidence Kit (SAEK) was dubbed Ontario’s most successful rapist trap. Since then, the kit has become the key source of evidence in the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault as well as a symbol of victims’ improved access to care and justice. Unfortunately, the SAEK has failed to live up to these promises.
The Technoscientific Witness of Rape is the first book to chart the thirty year history of the sexual assault evidence kit and its role in a criminal justice system that re-victimizes many assault victims in their quest for medical treatment and justice. Drawing on actor-network theory and feminist technology studies, Andrea Quinlan combs through sixty-two interviews with police, nurses, scientists, and lawyers, as well as archival records and legal cases to trace changes in sexual assault forensics, law, advocacy, and anti-violence activism in Ontario. Through this history Quinlan bravely and provocatively argues th
Table of Contents
List of Figures Acknowledgements Epigraph * Introduction: Diffracting the Technoscientific Witness * Inscriptions of Doubt: Law, Anti-Rape Activism, and the Early SAEK * Stabilizing the SAEK: Controversies in Practice, Advocacy, and Expertise * Assembling the Genetic Technoscientific Witness: Visions of Justice, Safety, and the Stranger Rapist * Instability Within: The Technoscientific Witness in Contemporary Practice * Reassembling Technoscience: Troubled Pasts and Imagined Futures Appendix: Interview Sample References Notes
