When Maria* was sexually assaulted during her first year at the University of Bristol, she did not feel able to go to a Sexual Assault Referral Centre. She instead decided to use a self-swab DNA kit that Enough, a start-up company that believes its kits can help “end rape”, had been distributing at pubs and cafes around the city days earlier.
“I was in a mess, and I felt too weak to go to a SARC,” she told openDemocracy. “But I thought I would do the kit.”
A friend volunteered to post the swab to Enough’s laboratory partner, which would then analyse it to see if two sets of DNA were present. “Months went by, and I didn’t hear anything,” Maria said. “I didn’t know how long it was meant to take.”
She later learnt her kit had been lost in the post.
“To them, maybe the kit was just a number. To me, it was the only thing I had to show that something had happened,” Maria said. “I felt completely powerless. The bit that really upset me was the way they handled someone who has been through all of this.”
openDemocracy has reviewed text messages exchanged between Maria and Enough’s co-founder, Katie White, which show that the laboratory never received the kit. White apologised, writing: “I am so sorry this happened.”
The pair also spoke on the phone. “I couldn’t believe what she said next: that it was better to take it to the Post Office,” said Maria. “It wasn’t clear online that you had to take it to the Post Office. How can you expect rape victims to queue at the Post Office holding a branded rape kit? I felt the blame had shifted a bit.
Enough told openDemocracy that the incident has led to improvements in its tracking system and that it “provided support” to Maria. But its terms and conditions absolve it of all “social, emotional, or legal consequences” of using the kits, meaning the company faces no repercussions when things fall apart.
It’s been six months since our award-nominated investigation into Enough found that the start-up’s ‘test and learn’ approach to rape risks the safety and wellbeing of sexual assault victims and survivors. Maria’s experiences confirm what experts in the violence against women sector told us they feared: Enough is promising victims a solution – whether in terms of aiding their recovery or aiding a legal case – only for that solution to fail.
Now a Conservative MP has asked the Home Office to ban the kits, saying Enough is “cynically promoting” itself to “women fearful of being raped, and worse, vulnerable survivors”.
Explaining her decision to openDemocracy, shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns said: “They claim the kits are a deterrent, as if it is a woman’s responsibility to deter rape. It isn’t a deterrent; rapists know that all police forces have DNA kits and it does not stop them committing offences.
Enough is “undermining confidence in the criminal justice system,” Kearns added, saying: “We should not be weaponising women’s fears.”
More than 74,265 people were raped in England and Wales in the year up to September 2025, according to the National Crime Survey, which asks members of the public about their experiences of crime (including offences that weren’t reported to the police) over the last 12 months.
While no one can deny the epidemic levels of sexual violence in the UK, Enough is accused of inaccurately inflating the scale of the emergency. Its website claims that more than 430,000 women are raped each year and that “a woman is twice as likely to be raped as be diagnosed with cancer”, which affects 190,000 women annually.
This figure is likely an overestimate, yet Enough told openDemocracy it has since revised it up to 490,336. It reached this figure on the basis that around 85% of rapes in England and Wales are not reported to police, and the incorrect assumption that the 74,265 people who told the National Crime Survey that they had been raped had all made police reports. In reality, the survey says it is specifically intended to “find out about crimes which do not get reported to, or recorded by, the police” – revealing a more complete picture of crime than police data.
openDemocracy can now reveal that the Advertising Standards Authority has opened an investigation into the company over these and other claims.
The probe was launched after a complaint was filed by Martin Narey, the former head of the Prison and Probation Services and children’s charity Barnardo’s, who was alarmed by Enough’s refusal to correct its figures on the number of women raped each year and its claims that the self-swab kits were likely to be admissible in court.
Enough has also been accused of misleading the public over its funding claims, updating its website in October last year to say “it will now be funded” by the Home Office and police, as well as other donors. The misleading message remained online for just under three months, before being updated to state “we hope” Enough will receive government and Police and Crime Commissioner funding.
“An article on our website briefly contained an inaccuracy which was corrected as soon as we were made aware, which we apologise for,” Enough said.
Admissibility and evidence collection
Enough, which promotes itself as the “breathalyser of rape” and a “social deterrent” to sexual violence, distributes its kits for free to students in Bristol and sells them online for £20.
In an Instagram live in January 2025, White told her audience that the kits provide “validation and just a way of saying something bad happened”, which, she said, “is acknowledged among so many trauma experts to be the first step in recovery”. White added that the kits “can only be of support to your case” if a victim later goes to the police.
Both opportunities were denied to Maria after her kit went missing.
Generally, once a survivor has used Enough’s swab and posted it off, half of the sample is analysed by Enough’s laboratory partner, AlphaBiolabs, a UK-based company that offers a range of DNA testing, including paternity and ancestry tests. The other half is frozen for 20 years and can be retrieved if a victim later wants to share it with the police.
But the Association of Forensic Science Providers has warned that analysing only half the swab “is likely to result in missed evidence, especially when relying on a swab that has not been taken by a trained professional, as there is unlikely to be an even distribution of material on the swab head.”
This risks a false negative, in which the laboratory fails to find a second set of DNA. Such a possibility undermines Enough’s central claims that using the kit “confirms” a survivor’s experience of assault and can deter rape by warning potential perpetrators that their DNA will be collected.
Enough told openDemocracy that “any DNA test, whether police, SARC or Enough, may not return perpetrator DNA.”
But the Association of Forensic Science Providers is clear in its warning, saying: “It appears that the pitfalls of these self-swabbing kits far outweigh any benefits, therefore we would not recommend self-swabbing kits as a method to recover forensic evidence in cases of sexual assault and rape.”
Experts warn that individuals who have used an Enough self-swab and later decide to go to the police could also face issues there.
As with any criminal case, police officers would have to gather any evidence the victim can offer, which could include swabs in cases of sexual assault. But this does not mean that a self-swab would be able to be used in court, particularly as a defendant's legal team would likely cast doubt over whether it could have been contaminated by being done at home without a forensic professional.
Enough’s website says its kits can be admissible in criminal cases if the survivor confirms to a court that the sample is genuine, and was taken and stored in such a way as to avoid contamination. It has posted online that its kits have been given to the police, but not if they have been used in court.
But guidance from the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine, NHS England and leading victim support organisations states that self-swabbed DNA evidence may compromise forensic standards, which could mean it is not admissible in court.
This was echoed by the National Police Chief’s Council lead for adult sexual offences, Sarah Crew, who told openDemocracy: “We remain concerned that the use of self-testing DNA kits may cause significant issues around the integrity and admissibility of criminal evidence as it moves through the criminal justice process.
“We urge caution regarding claims made about the evidential value and deterrent effect of self-swab kits. The safety, wellbeing, and rights of victims must remain at the centre of all responses to sexual violence.”
The Association of Forensic Science Providers also urges caution with self-swab kits, writing that “storage and proving the integrity of samples is crucial to provide a chain of custody for evidential samples. With self-swabbing, it is not possible to prove when or where the sample was taken.”
When asked about admissibility by openDemocracy and other journalists, Enough has consistently said they “could be” admissible and pointed to international examples, such as in Canada and Western Australia, where self-swabbed DNA is used.
But in the Canada pilot, which is taking place in only one city of 7,900 people, self-collection is offered with the support of a trained frontline worker. The company running the scheme underlines a note on its website saying that its kits “are not intended for at-home use”. Similarly, the scheme in Western Australia says self-swabs are designed to be used only “when a medical forensic examination is delayed or not possible”. The kits are banned in some, although not all, US states.
The deterrent
Enough claims that collecting DNA evidence “deters” rapists, as potential perpetrators will think twice if they assume a student could have the kit.
But Martin Narey told openDemocracy Enough is “utterly wrong” to make this claim – and fears its kits could actually put more victims at risk.
Narey explained: “Deterrence has a generally insignificant effect on offenders. But, and ironically in the light of Enough’s claims about deterrence, that is not always the case with stranger rapists who will sometimes think carefully about avoiding detection.”
“It is entirely possible that a serial rapist, aware of the inadmissibility of self-swab kits (and some rapists are sufficiently knowledgeable and sophisticated), may choose to attack and rape a young woman at or near a university where he knows lots of such kits have been [distributed].
“The harsh truth is, and no matter how well-intentioned this initiative might have been, the widespread use of self-swab kits is likely to thwart the conviction of stranger rapists.”
Widespread use of Enough could also allow serial rapists to attack undetected, experts have warned. Unlike forensic science providers, such as a Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Enough is not accredited to interrogate DNA databases, a process that can help to identify repeat perpetrators.
“Imagine there is a serial rapist in Bristol,” Kearns said. “All the girls have these kits. His DNA is not being collected by the police or a SARC, and so the police cannot identify him as a serial offender. That means you can have a serial rapist walking free. The rapist, if he has offended before, is not being identified and stopped.”
Enough told openDemocracy that “the more DNA and intelligence that can be gathered for survivors instead of losing it, the more rapists we will be able to convict and stop hurting others.”
But it has never been able to prove the deterrent effect of its kits. In a statement, it said: “70% of independently assessed students in Bristol said Enough created deterrence against rape”.
This is subjective: there is no way for students, or Enough, to know for sure.
“There’s no evidence that says these kits are a deterrent,” said Liberal Democrat MP Helen Maguire, who became aware of the kits after a constituent contacted her with concerns.
“We should be investing in better sex and relationships education, we need better warnings about harmful content on social media, and we need education that promotes healthy relationships,” Maguire told openDemocracy.
“We should be focused on providing and investing in better support in universities and via sexual assault referral centres, not giving young women a false sense of hope.”
Silencing
Despite the growing concerns raised over Enough, not least over its presence at a far-right rally, the company continues to grow its influence.
Since July, it has met with an MP and peer, posted Instagram posts from Downing Street, been shortlisted at the National Diversity Awards and launched its Dads for Daughters campaign, where men are encouraged to “channel your inner Liam Neeson” (a reference to Neeson’s film Taken) and buy the £20 kits for the women in their lives.
Meanwhile, those who speak out against Enough face threats.
Emails obtained by openDemocracy under Freedom of Information laws show that when domestic and sexual abuse charity First Light published an article on its website about self-swab DNA kits, Enough accused it of being “defamatory”.
The article repeated the Association of Forensic Science Providers’ statement about the “pitfalls” of self-swab kits. Enough said that this was “untrue and damaging” as “so far no pitfalls have been demonstrated”. This was sent after Maria’s kit went missing.
The company added that it “will need to consider other routes” if First Light did not respond within 24 hours to its suggestion that “you remove your content”.
A spokesperson from the charity told openDemocracy: “First Light has a responsibility to ensure that relevant stakeholders, including universities and safeguarding professionals, are aware of concerns raised by leading professional bodies about any service model affecting survivors of sexual violence.
“The concerns we communicated were based on published positions from the Association of Forensic Science Providers, the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine, and Rape Crisis England & Wales.
“We remain open to constructive dialogue with any organisation working in this space, provided that dialogue is conducted in good faith and with genuine engagement with the expert concerns that have been raised.“
We put all our allegations to Enough, which said it “is a non-profit working to prevent the rape epidemic: 490,336 rapes, <1% convictions. Current initiatives have not yet created effective deterrence. Enough, by comparison, has had extraordinary results in its Bristol pilot with 1,000 rapes reported.”
Those 1,000 reports appear to be the total number of testimonies of sexual abuse submitted to the Enough website, which include historic incidents and non-rape sexual assaults. A person does not have to use a self-swab DNA kit to be able to document their attack on Enough’s website. We asked Enough and AlphaBioLabs to confirm how many kits had been analysed but they declined to respond.
“Enough is option 3 for the 80%+ of survivors who don’t go to the police or a SARCs and creates a threat for all the perpetrators who face no consequence today (<1% convicted). Amazingly some in the existing sector are trying everything to block an independent evaluation of Enough, despite willing institutions and partners in cities wishing to support and fund it, and survivors asking for it,” they added.
But for Maria, who is herself a survivor and now has to face Enough’s presence on campus day in, day out, Enough “left me feeling even worse than I was before”.
*Names have been changed to protect identity. Sexual assault survivors have a lifelong right to anonymity.
