Nowhere was this safeguarding gap more obvious to me than when I spoke to Maria (not her real name). After she was assaulted, Maria used an Enough kit that the company’s ambassadors had given her a few days earlier. The kit then went missing in the post on the way to the lab. While Enough’s founders apologised, they could not be held liable for the error.
These are not the terms for your phone contract. It’s not buying a dress online that the courier never delivers. This is about the safety and wellbeing of a woman who has been sexually assaulted, and whose DNA is now somewhere in a Royal Mail sorting office. How can it be possible that a company dealing with vulnerable individuals – encouraging them to take intimate tissue samples – can absolve itself of all responsibility to that victim? This is the question that has haunted me and driven me in all my investigations into Enough.
Enough is a commercialised and privatised response to the social problem of sexual violence; one that puts the work of ending rape into women’s hands. It tells women that taking and using the kits is a way to “deter” rape, overturning decades of work by the violence against women sector to reassure women that it is not our responsibility to prevent sexual violence. At the same time, dads are told to cough up the cash to buy kits for their daughters in order to keep their girls safe – again, putting the responsibility on victims, not perpetrators, to end rape.
Meanwhile, the online testimonials are anonymised and posted on Enough’s social media, helping to build its audience so it can reach more people with its product.
And yet, Enough takes no responsibility for a survivor’s safety, wellbeing or subsequent legal case should she choose to report to the police. If she feels distressed or traumatised writing her testimonial, Enough is not liable. If her swab returns a false negative because the laboratory analysis misses a second of DNA, Enough is not liable. If the police and courts say her swab is not admissible as evidence, Enough is not liable. The website only says it “could” be admissible, after all.
