Hard to Swallow
Time was when the biggest danger in taking your eye off your glass was that someone would swipe it. Not any more. Viv Groskop reports on the rapid rise in drink spiking in Britain's bars
Originally published in The Guardian, June 5, 2001
When Suzanne Whyte, 27, sent out an email one afternoon at work, she did not expect it to be read by anyone but the nine close friends on her address list. Now she feels as if her message has been seen by every woman in the country with an email account and a social life. The email, with the subject box "An eye on the drinks", was a warning to her friends to watch out for spiked drinks in bars and clubs.
When Whyte wrote it, she had just spent the afternoon at Charing Cross police station with Polly Young, 23, a fellow account executive in a London PR firm. The email told of the aftermath of Young's night out at Sugar Reef, a central London club, with an old school friend, Annmarie, also 23, on the last Friday in April. They both finished the evening unconscious in the toilets. Neither could remember much apart from feeling sick and dizzy after drinking two glasses of wine.
Over the weekend they began to wonder if they had been slipped a drug. When Young visited the police station with Whyte the following Monday, the police mentioned GHB (liquid ecstasy) and Rohypnol.
Whyte's message to watch out was unintentionally timely. Detective chief inspector Peter Sturman, chairman of the Drug Rape Trust, says that spiking of drinks is on the increase in the UK. "We are not talking epidemic proportions here," he says, "but we have noticed a marked increase in people saying: 'My drink was spiked but I managed to get to a safe place.' We must not overstate it and we don't want to scare people. Just if somebody's going out for a good time one evening, it should be somewhere at the back of their mind."
Last year, the trust spoke to 780 complainants reporting drug-assisted attacks. This year, month by month, the number is up by 50%. These statistics are backed by a spate of incidents between January and March this year in Banbury, Oxfordshire, where six women reported having been drugged but not attacked. After a local media campaign, the attempts stopped, but another five women came forward with complaints that dated back several weeks.
In Chelmsford, Essex, two women reported drug-assisted sexual assault in the post-Christmas period. Again, a police campaign stopped the problem, but seven more reports emerged. (These included one man: research last year showed that 11% of victims are men.) "This problem has always been around, but in certain areas it is on the increase," says Kathy Payne, crime reduction officer at Chelmsford.
The experience of Polly Young and her friend Annmarie is typical. They had turned up at the club at around 9pm to meet a group of friends. A glass of wine later, the friends still hadn't turned up: a phone call confirmed that they were on their way. The pair bought another glass of wine and took to the dance floor, leaving a bag and their drinks at a nearby table they thought was in eye-shot. Later, as their friends arrived, they finished their drinks.
The next thing Young remembers, she says, was "I began to feel dizzy and I was shaking my head. I thought, I'm really drunk—this can't be right." She rushed to the toilets, was violently sick and passed out. "After that I don't remember anything except this big shape—it must have been a bouncer—seeing me out of the club." She has no idea how she got home.
In the toilets on another floor in the club, Annmarie had also passed out. Their friends assumed the two women had gone home together.
The next day, Young found that she had her bag with her, but her wallet, mobile phone and trainers were missing. "The police said that as we had turned up as two single girls on our own, maybe someone had thought we looked like a good thing. Then suddenly our mates had arrived, so they must have thought they'd get something out of it anyway, as they had seen where I'd put my bag."
The Drug Rape Trust, whose Be Aware, Take Care campaign starts in the coming weeks, is anxious to dispel the myth that any of the reported cases in Banbury, Chelmsford or London is likely to be a Rohypnol attack. "The hype around it has been extremely counterproductive," Sturman says. In fact, Rohypnol has never been detected in the urine sample of a drug attack complainant in the UK, though it is common in Australian and American cases. Six other drugs have had proven use in the UK: five are prescription drugs from the benzodiazepine family (ie sedatives such as temazepam or Valium) and one is illegal (GHB).
But there is another, more frighteningly mundane culprit, says Professor Valerie Curran of University College London, who has carried out research into the effects of the substances used in drug-assisted assault. "The traditional Mickey Finn: something as simple as vodka in white wine. People forget that alcohol is still by far the most commonly used drug in this context."
In cases in which an attack has taken place, the offender profile is commonly "men who have weird ideas of control and no respect for women," Curran says. "For some of them, it is almost related to necrophilia because the women are virtually unconscious when the attack occurs."
The offenders are often running a bigger risk than they realise, Sturman says. "When the attacker doesn't know what medication the person is taking, the result could be fatal. I have known cases in which people think they can do this 'for a laugh' but it could get you convicted of manslaughter."
In a survey of 123 complainants last year, it emerged that 42% of the women attacked were over 30. "This could be because of two factors," Sturman says. "Either they have come out of a long-term relationship and are going out into the big, bad world again and are not as streetwise as they used to be. Or, as this crime is very much about control for the offender, often they target successful, confident-looking women who would otherwise be out of their reach."
The Drug Rape Trust is optimistic about raising awareness and developing deterrents. The Department of Trade and Industry is currently working on a prototype for swizzle sticks that change colour if there is a drug in a drink and Sturman would eventually like to see beer mats reading "Watch your drink" and warning posters at eye level in toilets. In Essex, the local police campaign was launched in a club. "The clubs and pubs couldn't have been more helpful," Kathy Payne says, "because it makes them look as though they are being responsible."
A spokesperson for Sugar Reef says they are doing all they can to "crack down on this disgusting crime" and that they have instructed their staff to be extra vigilant. However, Polly Young isn't convinced this is enough. "The police told us that some of the clubs in the Soho area have refused to put up posters warning people about this. I was really annoyed about that. I want people to be aware of this. I never believed it could happen to me. I was lucky."
For more information contact the Drug Rape Trust, 01702 317695.
