To some, she’s a feminist icon who stands to revolutionize our broken criminal justice system. To the attorneys general of New York and Pennsylvania, she is a latter-day Elizabeth Holmes albeit on a smaller scale: a fraud who, in Campbell’s case, exploits the confusion and desperation of rape victims. (She even dated “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli for five months after he was released from prison for fraud.)
They say that Campbell’s crime is “misleading” victims of sexual assault into thinking they could one day get justice using her innovation: at-home rape kits sold under the name Leda Health. The attorneys general say the evidence collected by her kits will never be admissible in court, and therefore, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, is “illegal, fraudulent, and deceptive.”
But Campbell says that just because this hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
“We built our system to basically be as advanced as humanly possible,” says Campbell, who said she studied epidemiology in college before dropping out her senior year to escape an “extremely awful” ex-boyfriend. “Our advice is to go to the hospital to get a full rape kit, but if you’re not comfortable with that, we believe that if you follow our instructions, it’s your next best shot.”
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