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A start-up says it can ‘end rape’. Read the fine print [1]

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Date: 2026-02 

Enough – the start-up company offering self-swab DNA kits for rape survivors – launched in Bristol in 2024 as the self-described “breathalyser of rape”. It claimed to offer a solution to the rape epidemic that survivors want.

The company hands out rape kits to students for free, while selling them online for £20. It specifically targets fathers with its “dads for daughters” product, encouraging men to “channel their inner Liam Neeson” (a reference to the film Taken) and buy five kits for £100.

As well as the kits, Enough encourages survivors to post on its online testimonial platform and offers videos with advice on how to cope with trauma following sexual violence.

But its terms and conditions reveal how Enough is very different from other organisations supporting victims and survivors of sexual abuse. The company absolves itself of any liability for survivors’ safety and wellbeing, stating that “while you may have a strong emotional reaction” to using its services, “you expressly agree to assume all risks associated with your use of the Services and not to hold Enough liable for any social, emotional, or legal consequences of such discoveries or encounters.”

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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.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/enough-end-rape-self-swab-dna-kit-privatisation-bristol-university-small-print/

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