A message from our CEO
To all of our supporters, stakeholders, funders, members and, most importantly, survivors.
Over the past year, Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW) have been expressing our concerns about the promotion and sale of so-called self-swab ‘rape kits’, primarily (but not exclusively) to students and young people on or around University campuses, and on social media. The kits, sold for £20 each, are marketed as a ‘simple and easy’ way for survivors to collect DNA samples and report rape, and deter rapists.
It has recently come to our attention that a community interest company, which sells the kits, have published inaccurate information about RCEW and our member centres on their website. We're concerned that this could discourage survivors from coming forward for support and we therefore wrote to the company on 10 October 2025, to point out the inaccurate information and to ask for it to be amended or removed. We also requested that they provide sources for any information they use or retain on their website or other channels/materials, regarding our organisation and our member centres.
Unfortunately, the inaccurate information has not been removed at the time of publication, nor have any sources for the various assertions been added. We therefore wish to clarify this information so that survivors, funders and commissioners are clear about the work of our organisation and that of our members:
Claim 1
There are 38 separate Rape Crisis centres around the country.
Our response
The United Kingdom comprises four constituent countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales.
There are currently 36 Rape Crisis Centres across England & Wales, accurate information about which can be found here.
RCEW is the membership body for these 36 centres. We also provide the national 24/7 Support Line.
There are many more Rape Crisis centres in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Claim 2
In total Rape Crisis receives about £70m in funding and assists about 160,000 people per year, of which about 75,000 are recent survivors, about 15% of people who are raped each year.
Our response
Rape Crisis England & Wales’ member centres work with tens of thousands of survivors each year; this number has fluctuated between 50-80,000 survivors over the last 3 years.
The national 247 Support Line, run by Rape Crisis England & Wales in partnership with our members, connects circa 80,000 calls and webchats each year. Some people call more than once.
Rape Crisis England & Wales receive funding independently of our centres and our annual turnover is less than £5m per year. Accurate information about our accounts can be found on the Charity Commission website.
The total annual income across our membership is significantly less than £70m, at around £40m per year. Accurate information about our centres’ income can be found on the Charity Commission website.
Centres face severe and longstanding underfunding, relative to need. More information about this is available here.
Claim 3
The cost per person helped is about £400 and on average they receive about 2.3 hours of personal contact time, at a cost of £180 per hour.
Our response
Rape Crisis England & Wales reject these calculations and are unable to determine how they’ve been made or what they are based on.
Every Rape Crisis Centre offers substantially more contact time than 2.3 hours per survivor. All of the support we provide is tailored to each survivor’s unique needs, and we will always try to do that, whether they need 2 hours or 20.
Determining a ‘cost’ per person would need to take into account survivors’ diverse needs, including how barriers to access may be reduced, and ensuring that the environment is trauma informed and meets their needs.
We wish to assure survivors that the ‘cost’ of supporting them is, to us, irrelevant. What matters more is that every person who needs our help feels able to come forward, feels worthy of that support, and never ever feels guilty or that they are asking for ‘too much’ by seeking our help. Nothing is too awful, nor too irrelevant, to receive support with.
Claim 4
85% of survivors choose not to access Rape Crisis Centres. Survivors may access counselling after a long wait, and receive help from professionals who already work in the NHS and in the private sector”.
Our response
The Rape Crisis movement been providing specialist support based on the needs of survivors for over fifty years.
It is widely accepted that we may never know the true scale of sexual violence and abuse in England & Wales since the majority of survivors choose not to report what happened to them to the police or other agencies. It is therefore impossible to calculate how many survivors there are, what proportion come to Rape Crisis, or what the specific reasons for this are.
Many thousands of survivors choose to come to Rape Crisis Centres each year because they want to access free and independent support from specialist, community-based services.
Waiting lists unfortunately remain a challenge across many services. However, we wish to encourage and reassure all survivors currently waiting for their chosen form of support that a core priority for us, is campaigning for sustainable levels of funding which adequately reflect and meet the needs of survivors.
The company (‘Enough’) have also asserted that “Rape Crisis opposes Enough “in solidarity” with the FFLM; also on the grounds that survivors should report to the police or to a SARC, and should access alternative support”. We wish to make clear that we support survivors to make the decisions that are right for them, and that the concerns we have about the promotion and sale of self-swab ‘rape kits’ are not based on those of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine (FFLM) (see here and here).
Rather, the concerns we have, set out in our position statement, were arrived at independently and include that:
- There are no known cases in which DNA evidence obtained by a self-swab kit has been ruled admissible in a criminal trial in the UK. We are unaware of any cases where DNA obtained in this way has led to a successful conviction.
- Self-swab kits can only detect the number and sex of any identified DNA profiles, not whose DNA it is or where on the body it came from.
- Survivors don’t need to pay for DNA testing after rape. Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) provide a more extensive and reliable service, as well as treatment for injuries, STIs and emergency contraception and more – all free of charge. You don’t need to be pursuing a criminal prosecution to access a SARC, and can find one here. You will be supported by a specially trained member of staff at the SARC who will ensure that any examination is on your terms, and that you receive onward support that is right for you. Whilst the prospect of attending a SARC is understandably daunting, in comparison to administering a self-swab kit in the privacy of your home, this is the most reliable option to obtain forensic evidence and other support.
- Forensic Medical Examinations (FME) are conducted in SARCs in forensically cleaned environments, by professionally trained staff, and all evidence is gathered and stored in line with the Forensic Science Regulator’s Code of Practice, to have the most chance of being admissible and reliable.
- SARCs are able to gather much more evidence than just DNA samples, for example photographs and documentation of bruising, hair and nail samples etc, all of which could be relevant in a criminal trial.
- Self-collected evidence gathered at home and sent in the post is highly vulnerable to loss, contamination and damage.
- There is a narrow window of time (usually up to 10 days, but the sooner the better) after sexual assault in which forensic testing can take place. A survivor who uses a kit and then later discovers that the evidence is either lost in the post, or will not be admissible in a criminal trial, could well then find that they have then missed the forensic window for further forensic evidence collection. To avoid any risks of this happening, we advise that survivors attend a SARC in the first instance.
- Self-swab results are not integrated into the police national database, meaning that opportunities could be lost to catch serial rapists and perpetrators.
- The Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine’s recently published letter to UK Universities is clear that “there is no evidence that the availability of such kits acts as a deterrent to sexual violence”. More importantly, we don’t think survivors need to buy products or use self-swab kits to know that that they didn’t consent to sexual activity, particularly since the vast majority of rapists are known to their victims.
- The claim that self-swab rape kits are the “breathalyser of rape” is flawed. Breathalysers detect the presence of alcohol in a person’s breath, and can therefore be reliably used to say that the person is under the influence of alcohol. Self-swab rape kits detect DNA, which may confirm that sexual activity took place, but not whether this was consensual – the critical issue in the vast majority of prosecution cases.
In England & Wales, a wide variety of agencies and individuals have shared similar concerns:
- NHS England – see here
- The Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine, British Association for Sexual Health & HIV, SceneSafe Evidence Recovery Systems, King’s College London, and NPCC Forensic Capability Network – see here
- Victim Support – see here
- The Eddystone Trust, HIV and Sexual Health Services – see here
- Katrin Hohl, Independent Advisor to UK Government on Criminal Justice responses to Sexual Violence – see here
- Claire Waxman OBE, current London Victim’s Commissioner and confirmed new Victims Commissioner for England & Wales as of January 2026 – see here
Whilst our concerns align with those of many other agencies and individuals, they are expressed independently and not in ‘solidarity’ with them.
If you need support after rape or sexual abuse, the national 247 Support Line, which has achieved the National Helplines Partnership quality standard, is available to anyone aged 16+ in England or Wales, who has experienced any form of sexual harm at any time in their lives.
Ciara Bergman, CEO, Rape Crisis England & Wales