A poster outside James Allen’s girls’ school, in response to reports of rape culture being prevalent at nearby Dulwich College, London, 23 March 2021. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian View image in fullscreen A poster outside James Allen’s girls’ school, in response to reports of rape culture being prevalent at nearby Dulwich College, London, 23 March 2021. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Opinion Rape and sexual assault A company in the UK offering rape testing kits faces widespread criticism – but shouldn’t we ask why it exists at all? Zoe Williams Sexual violence is hugely under-reported and cases rarely make it to court. These are the facts that should shock us
T wo years ago, Katie White set up Enough, which distributes self-swabbing rape kits. These are DIY kits that people who believe they have been raped or sexually assaulted can use at home by collecting DNA and posting it to a private laboratory for analysis.
White was responding to a few stark facts about sexual violence in England and Wales: of more than 70,000 rapes reported to police in 2021-22, only 2,223 resulted in charges . The number of reports was only a fraction of rapes anyway: 83% of survivors choose not to go to the police.
Sixteen- to 35-year-olds are overwhelmingly the targets and crime survey data found a higher proportion of full-time students were victims of sexual assault in the past year than any other occupation type. From all this, White inferred that the number of student rapists being brought to justice was only the barest fraction of the total.
White says that the kits provide women with an option after a rape to gather evidence at home, before they decide what to do and whether to visit a sexual assault referral centre or contact the police. She tells me that the kits were positively received by students when they were handed out at campuses. The institutional response has been critical.
Victim Support and a number of rape charities have reacted strongly against self-swabbing because people may wrongly think of it as an alternative to going to a sexual assault referral centre (SARC) and accessing the ancillary support these services offer, such as counselling. The National Police Chiefs Council said the kits may “ reduce trust in statutory services ” and both warn that evidence collected outside regulated environments may not be admissible in court.
All of this is entirely fair: survivors deserve the best support available, and the best evidence gathering, should they decide to press charges. But what none of the criticisms address is the fact that rape survivors are avoiding those channels for legitimate reasons – they see a gruelling process that dominates the victim’s life as much if not more than the perpetrator’s, with a minuscule chance of conviction. If trust is low, it’s most likely because six years ago the then victims’ commissioner for England and Wales, Vera Baird, said that rape had been effectively decriminalised . A startup trying to find a workaround is a signifier of the problem, not a problem in itself.
Enough’s online materials were reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) by Martin Narey, former head of Prisons and Probation in England and Wales. One complaint was about the statement “430,000 rapes happen a year”, which Narey said was “frightening young women and terrifying their parents by exaggerating the likelihood of being raped”. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics have the…