On a bitingly cold Tuesday, ambassadors dressed in bright orange sweatshirts hand out self-swab rape kits and packets of chocolates from a paddling pool to fellow Bristol University students moving between lectures. “Can I take one for my daughter?” asks a middle-aged woman.
The ambassadors are volunteers for Enough, a not-for-profit organisation that was launched as a pilot in October, offering free DNA testing kits to students in Bristol who had reported rape, and online resources to support them.
Emma, 19, says, “I volunteer because I saw a poster on the back of a loo door, ‘Do you want to end rape at university?’ Obviously, I do.”
Grace, 19, offering kits to passersby, discusses consent with two male students. She says she was raped at 15. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t feel I could. Enough isn’t an alternative to going to the police or reporting to the university. It’s an alternative to doing nothing.”
Enough says it was launched following advice from police, criminologists, lawyers and psychologists. It has since handed out 7,000 free kits to students at Bristol University and the University of the West of England (UWE) and says that 270 rapes have been reported to its online platform so far, and seven kits have been sent for lab testing.
Its aim is to sell the kits at £20 each to universities, schools and workplaces. “Our DNA kits give power to survivors and deter perpetrators,” its orange leaflets promise. The issue is: how?
Every major organisation involved in tackling sexual violence is strongly opposed to self-swabbing. Enough’s critics include the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), Bristol University, UWE, Rape Crisis England and Wales, Bristol city council and the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine (FFLM), a charity that maintains professional standards. They say that self-swabs do not always provide reliable evidence that can be used in criminal proceedings and may not be admissible in court, and that, if survivors self-swab instead of interacting with services such as the police or NHS, they miss out on help such as psychological and forensic assessment – which would be provided at a sexual assault referral centre (Sarc).
There are 55 independent Sarcs in England, offering victims – whether or not they decide to report to the police – therapeutic care, medical and forensic examination including emergency contraception, and testing for sexually transmitted infections. Sarcs arrange counselling and address safeguarding, and can also offer vital tests for collecting the jigsaw pieces that may lead to a conviction, such as toxicology results and clothing fibres.
Is their opposition justified? Or can Enough, as it hopes, help the 75% of students who are sexually assaulted and “do nothing”, according to young people’s sexual health charity Brook?
“University is supposed to be the best years of your life. You don’t want it defined by rape,” says Katie White, 29, the co-founder of Enough. “Validation from the self-swab is the first step to recovery. It gives you back agency and choice. At university, rape is a risk. It is usually someone you know. The mass presence of the kit across campus says pretty clearly: there are consequences if you have sex without consent.
“What students want is a simple and discreet way of confirming something bad happened to them, to stop it happening to others and to get better. Enough is intended as a route to social, not criminal justice.”
But Prof Catherine White from the FFLM says: “At best, Enough is reckless. A lot of people don’t report rape, a lot of people don’t go to a Sarc, but that doesn’t mean that Enough’s solution is the answer.”
Ciara Bergman, head of Rape Crisis England and Wales, says: “We fully support approaches to sexual violence that empower survivors. But interventions that could mislead people into thinking they can deter the actions of a rapist risk being ineffective at best, and actively harmful at worst.”
Enough’s White argues: “We advise every person to go to the police or report to a Sarc if that’s what they choose before engaging with Enough, but many don’t trust the police or are put off if they tell their friends and find they side with the perpetrator.
“At university, people feel so insecure about friendship. They won’t do what’s right, they’ll do what’s easiest. One girl told me, ‘What he did broke my heart. What my best friend did obliterated it.”
Enough’s co-founder is Tom Allchurch, 62, a British entrepreneur based in New York. He helped to build Amazon and Hello Fresh, projects that, he says, used “digital technology to drive enormous behaviour change at very low cost”.
Allchurch says he only found out about his daughter’s rape at school three years later. As a result, he says, he became involved in tackling sexual violence including, briefly, acting as an unpaid consultant for the American launch of a DIY self-swabbing kit called MeToo Kits, later rebranded as Leda Health.
Leda Health was described as an “unsellable, untested product”, and attracted similar criticisms now voiced against Enough. These include that self-swabbing risks contamination; consent is the issue in most trials, not DNA, and even then the findings of a self-swab may not be admissible in court should the victim wish to press charges. That has yet to be tested. AlphaBiolabs, the laboratory used by Enough for its kits, says on its own website that “peace of mind” tests are not legally admissible in court because they are not taken by an independent third party.
Tana Adkin KC, a barrister who has worked on sexual violence cases for 30 years, says: “If a woman takes her own swab, the results are more likely to be challenged by any defendant subsequently charged. Also, the absence of DNA does not mean you haven’t been raped. Self-swabs do not help in cases of spiking or intoxication, and they’re not compared to the police national database.”
Rape is currently a crime almost without consequences in the UK. Last year, 69,958 rapes were reported to the police – but eight out of 10 victims of rape or attempted penetration did not report it, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). In 2021, the conviction rate was 1.6%, a figure which is slowly rising, partly as a result of improving police investigations.
A survey last year examined public understanding of rape myths and consent. Among 18- to 24-year-olds it found: “A stark regression in attitudes … compared to older generations.”
Lucia, 19, a student in Bristol, says: “We have such a strong sex culture at university but we don’t have a consent culture. It’s the impact of social media and pornography. Consent is seen as a game and ‘no’ as a tease.”
A survey into “consent culture” in 2021 by Bristol University students’ union found that 29% had experienced sexual assault. In 2023-24, the university received 20 official reports of student sexual misconduct. It has introduced reforms to reporting, support and disciplinary proceedings, but they have yet to be evaluated.
In Bristol, frustration and anger were felt by several students at the scale of non-consensual sex and the lack of action, while others expressed confusion about what constitutes consent. “I froze, I didn’t say no, I didn’t say anything, I didn’t fight back – is that a yes?” one says.
Adelaide, 19, was raped by her boyfriend. She says she resisted and screamed but his flatmate, sitting in the next room, did nothing. “I told my tutor. She was Googling what to do.”
Trish, who was raped at 15, reported it to police abroad, had a full forensic examination, then nothing happened. She applied for counselling when she arrived at university. Now, in her final year, she has received her first appointment. “I did as much as I could and it still wasn’t enough.”
“The fundamental issue is that the majority of universities are not seriously addressing rape culture on campus,” says Bergman. “They urgently need to roll out mandatory consent education, and funded pathways for survivors to access specialist services, such as those at rape crisis centres.”
The Office for Students (OfS), which regulates higher education, is introducing new conditions of registration in August, including improved reporting of sexual misconduct and ending the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims.
If a survivor who uses Enough later decides to report a rape to the police, half of the original swab is retained, untested, at the lab. She or he can also write a time-stamped encrypted testimony as part of the kit. An anonymous excerpt from the testimony is posted on social media as a live report, “a very important” way to “create deterrence”, Allchurch says. “We create deterrence simply by exposing the problem and the importance of consent,” he adds. Critics argue this would be difficult to prove.
If the kits’ presence on campus could act as a deterrent, what happens, for instance, when the would-be rapist graduates and moves to a place where DIY kits aren’t at all visible?
Might social media exposure lead to individuals wrongly being identified as a perpetrator? “Enough does not allow anyone to be accused,” Allchurch says. But he adds: “The real-time reporting of rapes means that perpetrators are being made aware that their name may be on the platform with a future risk of disclosure.” Enough, with 21,000 followers on social media, also has a Facebook support group and offers a series of 10-minute “trauma-informed” videos on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, which have been viewed, it says, more than 10m times. “The brilliant thing about digital is that it is so cheap,” Allchurch says. “We are harnessing the power of the new mass communication of free social media. We need to use this power to end rape.”
Critics point out that while digital mental health support and self-help has value, in terms of individual wellbeing and safety, achieving justice and tackling perpetrators, it is far better for a survivor to attend a Sarc.
Kate Davies, NHS England’s director of Sarcs, says: “A visit to a Sarc, including a referral to an independent sexual violence advocate, can be the start of a lifetime of care if that’s what’s required.”
“My motto for many years has been, ‘The swab is not the job’,” Prof White says. “It’s about holistic care for a person who may be very traumatised. In my experience, often a different person walks out of a Sarc than came in.”
Prof Katrin Hohl, co-creator of Operation Soteria Bluestone, a programme funded by the Home Office that aims to transform the police treatment of survivors, says: “A wealth of research tells us that what makes a victim survivor feel validated and what supports their recovery is friends, nurses, police officers and trained support workers believing them. It is unclear how a self-swab at home would provide that.”
A recent review praised the quality of Sarcs but criticised counselling waiting times and the fact that Sarcs were not widely known about. A social media campaign was launched last week to counter this. A million people a year in the UK are affected by sexual violence, according to the CSEW, and about 6.5 million women have been sexually assaulted since the age of 16, Bergman says, but only 30,000 a year will attend a Sarc.
Last year, Enough apologised for erroneously implying that FFLM, among others, were its advisers. It also issued “cease and desist” letters to critics, claiming institutions have vested interests and are reluctant to “accept a solution that is not their own”. “The way that humanity makes progress is for some people to do things other people don’t believe,” Allchurch says.
“Enough had two meetings with us at FFLM,” says Prof White. “We gave our advice. Like every other organisation, it was: ‘Don’t do it. It’s not a good idea.’ But it has carried on regardless.”
Enough does have some support. Alison Hernandez, Conservative police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, is unequivocal. “I’m all for it. We need innovation and disruption to tackle sexual violence. We need to try something radically different, to which young people respond.”
Claire Waxman, the mayor of London’s victims’ commissioner, says: “Enough has the social media tools and has established a connection with the young. It has launched a conversation that matters. It could do something else really positive in this space. But bin the DIY swabs.”
