Madison Campbell: Fraud or Feminist Hero?

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.)

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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.”

Ed Morrissey

Be sure to read this all, but color me skeptical about this product and its claims. Even if Campbell is well-intentioned, defense attorneys make their livings by attacking faulty chains of evidence. Law-enforcement professionals with training can make serious errors; amateurs would likely do far worse. I sympathize with the effort to avoid the added trauma of such examinations, but evidence collection isn't something one can DYI. 

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