Tech startup for sexual assault survivors moves to Lawrenceville

A health care tech startup that provides at-home early evidence kits for sexual assault survivors has moved its headquarters to Pittsburgh.

Leda Health has officially moved from the Brooklyn borough of New York City to Lawrenceville. The Butler Street location is under construction, with the goal to be completed Nov. 1, said co-founder and CEO Madison Campbell. Leda Health plans to expand its operations and hire additional staff.

“Right now we are a team of around 15 to 20,” Campbell said. “We’re hoping to increase that to 30 to 35.”

The New York office will remain open during the transition.

For Campbell, 27, the move is a sort of homecoming. She grew up in Bridgeville.

“We wanted to create a headquarters where our employees feel like they can actually buy a house,” Campbell said. “Where they can actually afford it they can send their kids to good schools and be able to put money away for the future.”

Leda, which was founded in 2019, specializes in early evidence kits that allow people who have been sexually assaulted to collect their own evidence in the privacy of their home.

The goal is to give individuals another option — administering a kit in a place where they feel secure — rather than going to a hospital or reporting to police.

According to the non-profit RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, every 68 seconds another American is sexually assaulted and one out of every six women in the U.S. has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. About 3% of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

RAINN said only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police.

“That means more than 2 out of 3 go unreported,” the nonprofit said.

Campbell notes that it’s not unusual for survivors to stay silent and not report it to law enforcement, out of a misplaced sense of shame, because they are processing trauma, or a fear they won’t be believed.

The company partners with organizations, like colleges or businesses, so they can have kits on hand if someone needs them. Leda Health says it also offers emergency contraception, infection and toxicology testing, an app for support, and educational programming.

Leda Health, which says it has six current partnerships, struck a deal in October with Delta Gamma Fraternity, a women’s fraternity with 149 collegiate chapters and around 18,000 members, for the 2023-2024 school year. The deal includes offering a user portal to access support and other resources as well as educational programming, in addition to at-home toxicology testing kits, testing kits for sexually transmitted diseases, and emergency contraception.

In August, Leda Health also contracted with the Air Force Work Project, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, for use of the kits. It is working with the Forensic and National Security Sciences Institute at Syracuse University, which is providing forensic expertise and subject matter insight, as Leda looks to scale up the distribution of their test kits, according to the startup.

Researchers at Syracuse University are “assisting Leda with gap analysis assessment, examining evidence collection processes, the chain of custody, documentation, and legal issues that need to be considered when using early evidence kits,” Leda said in August.

“Sexual assault within the military is a growing issue, with reported assaults increasing year after year, yet the rates of prosecution have nearly halved, one of the reasons being a lack of sufficient evidence,” Campbell said. “Having our kits available to members of the military could provide survivors with different options.

Campbell said it is also working with organizations in Ukraine and the Middle East to provide kits and other resources in war zones.

At-home evidence kits have been controversial, raising questions over how the evidence collected by the kits are handled and stored, whether survivors have proper access to medical care and law enforcement, and over the admissibility of the kits in court. The results of kits administered by medical professionals is uploaded to a federal database that is meant to identify repeat offenders.

Several states attorneys general, including in Michigan and New York, have issued warning letters or cease and desist letters to Leda and other companies making the kits.

In February, the Seattle Times reported that Washington state lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit the sale of over-the-counter sexual assault kits out of concern that they offer false hope and could thwart investigations and prosecutions.

In a public hearing for the bill, Leda Health defended its company and stressed the company does not sell directly to individuals, but rather to institutions like governments, universities or sororities, the Seattle Times reported.

Campbell said the company plans to reach out to the Allegheny County District Attorney and local governments about making the kits available.

“When it comes to admissibility, it’s a very nebulous topic,” Campbell told the Tribune-Review. “It comes down to relevance and reliability.

“We believe from our research that the evidence will be admissible in a court of law, but the question is around the weight of the evidence — would the weight of an at-home early evidence collection kit be utilized and be different than a hospital rape kit? Of course, a hospital rape kit is the gold standard.”

“But what Leda is intending to do is to work with the survivors who are never going to make it to the hospital in the first place because they don’t feel comfortable,” Campbell said. “We should be doing something for that large population. It’s giving survivors a voice and a choice.”