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.
You can read the rest of this investigation here.
