‘When I came to, I was face down on a bed...’: The horrific truth about drink spiking and why it is still rising
The home secretary’s joke about using a date rape drug shows why society still has a long way to go in confronting this crime. Olivia Petter talks to victims, experts and campaigners about the awful reality of spiking – and how to stop it
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Your support makes all the difference.The date was going well. Sarah*, 30, had met Tom* on Bumble. They’d been messaging for a few weeks before eventually deciding to meet for some drinks on a Monday evening in Hammersmith. “After my third glass of wine, I remember going to the bathroom and then my mind went blank,” Sarah recalls. “When I came to, I was face down on a bed, feeling a lot of pain, and trying to push Tom off of me, asking him to stop. He replied ‘Just relax,’ and then I passed out again.”
The next thing Sarah can remember is getting out of a taxi and walking to her front door. “I couldn’t stop vomiting, and had a thumping headache, as well as bruises on my inner thighs and hands. There was semen in my underwear.” After estimating the timings of it all, Sarah worked out that she had been at this man’s house for around four hours. “I was in pain for the next three days.”
This is the appalling reality behind the joke that the home secretary James Cleverly made at a Downing Street reception in December, when he talked about putting a date rape drug in his wife’s drink every night. He has since apologised. But the remark tells you everything you need to know about an issue in dire need of reform, at a policy as well as a societal level.
Sarah did not report being raped to the police. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon story. One in every 10 British women has had a drink spiked, according to a YouGov poll from December 2022. According to the charity Stamp Out Spiking, almost all (97 per cent) of those women won’t have reported what happened to the police; the reasons given include that victims “didn’t think there was enough evidence” (54 per cent), they “didn’t realise until it was too late” (35 per cent), and they “didn’t think the police would believe” them (29 per cent).
“I always thought, if something like this happened to me, that I would go to the police straight away,” Sarah tells me. “A part of me feels like I’ve let other women down by not doing that. But I was so ill and confused for the days afterwards, and none of the professionals I’d told seemed to believe me.” Looking at the statistics for conviction rates (under 1 per cent of reported rapes in the UK lead to conviction) and reading about the ways in which rape victims are questioned in court wasn’t exactly encouraging, either. “I felt like the system was geared against the victim not to support them.” Sarah did, however, report the incident to Bumble, who promptly found and removed the alleged perpetrator’s account.
None of this is new. In fact, drink-spiking is one of the things young women are warned about from an early age, even though 5 per cent of men have also been spiked, according to YouGov. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Never take a sip from a stranger’s drink. Keep your eyes on your glass at all times. These are lessons that are drilled into us over and over again. And yet, spiking has only become a more prevalent and dangerous issue – one in which burden and blame are almost always placed on the victim, both before and after the fact.
Spiking is illegal, carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison in England and Wales. While it is covered by several different areas of legislation, such as the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Sexual Offences Act 2003, as yet there is no single dedicated offence under which to prosecute perpetrators of spiking.
This could soon change. In December, the Home Office announced it would be cracking down on spiking ahead of the festive season, imposing changes to legislation, funding research into self-testing kits, and offering more training for door staff and better education for young people. Hours later, Britain’s home secretary made that joke.
“People don’t take spiking seriously,” says Dawn Dines, founder and CEO at Stamp Out Spiking. “There isn’t even any clear data on it because it’s virtually impossible to collect.” There are several reasons for this. The first is the lack of reporting: “Most victims are too ashamed,” explains Dines. “And because of the memory blanks, a lot of them don’t really know what’s happened to them. How can you report something when you aren’t even sure what it is?”
It’s possible to have been spiked without realising, or be gaslit into thinking you were just very drunk. “That’s the most sickening part,” says Dines. “I know victims who’ve been accused of drinking too much. Key service providers really need to be educated on these issues.” All this contributes to the degree of humiliation that victims of spiking often suffer on top of everything else. In many cases, this stops them from sharing their experience with friends and family, let alone the authorities.
“I only told my parents last November after spiking became a storyline in Coronation Street,” says Sarah. For Lily*, 32, who was also spiked on a date with someone she met on a dating app, reporting what happened only made things worse. “They were very condescending and kept telling me that my attacker seemed like a ‘nice man’.”
There isn’t even any clear data on it because it’s virtually impossible to collect
The experience was similarly harrowing for Mark*, 45, who was spiked in 2005 by a stranger while having drinks with an old friend in a pub. “My friend had to leave unexpectedly, so I decided to stay and finish his drink. Within five minutes, I started to feel dizzy and the room was spinning. A man’s shoes were suddenly visible in between mine, and I could smell male aftershave as a voice asked if I needed some fresh air.” The next thing Mark remembers is waking up in his flat. “It was clear that I’d been raped,” he says.
After calling 999, an ambulance and two male police officers arrived at Mark’s front door. “When I told them I’d been raped, one of the officers looked confused and said, ‘But you’re a guy, that doesn’t happen to men.’” Mark did not have any further contact with the police, and chose to live in ignorance regarding what had happened to him. Six months later, he was diagnosed with HIV. “After that, I just didn’t want to be here any more. I had so few memories of what had actually happened that my imagination ran wild. I was uneducated on the advancements that had been made in HIV treatments, so I’d often pray to go to sleep and not wake up.”
Even those who do go through the full reporting process face the issue that, by the time they’re able to do so, the majority of drugs used to spike drinks will, in all likelihood, have already passed through their system. “The most common thing to use right now is ketamine,” explains Dines. “That and some of the other ‘date-rape drugs’ can leave your system in as little as six hours.”
A class-B drug, ketamine is an anaesthetic primarily used by vets to tranquillise animals needing surgery. The effect on humans can depend on a number of factors, such as age and weight, but in low doses it can cause dissociation and numbness. Taken in high doses, it can lead to loss of consciousness. While there are endless drugs that could be used in spiking, common ones used include GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and GBL (gamma-butyrolactone), both of which are depressant drugs that can cause sedation, and Rohypnol (commonly referred to as “roofies”), which is a type of benzodiazepine. This too is a depressant drug, which produces sedative and muscle relaxant effects.
In 2021, there were several reports of needle spiking, when unsuspecting victims were injected with drugs using a needle. Victims of needle spiking reported feeling painful pinpricks on their body, usually in nightclubs, before blacking out. However, this is considered rare. “Some date-rape drugs are metabolised quickly and have a short duration of action,” explains Dr John Thompson on behalf of the British Toxicology Society. “Others are metabolised more slowly and have a much longer duration of action.” Whether or not the drug is detected in your body will depend on a range of factors, including how much you were given and how much you have eaten that day.
The effects of spiking depend on what drug is used, how much of it, and how it interacts with alcohol. This is all part of what makes it so difficult to collect specific data. “There is considerable overlap of symptoms,” adds Dr Thompson. “Commonly reported effects include drowsiness, loss of memory, and a feeling of inebriation which is disproportionate to the amount of alcohol reported to have been consumed.”
In addition to launching dedicated testing stations, one potential solution that has been touted is to mandate spiking test kits at bars and pubs. Some already stock them. “They aren’t fit for purpose,” says Dines. “Generally, the ones that are available only test for two or three types of drugs (usually GHB, GBL and Rohypnol) when there are hundreds of options people could be using. If anything, it might be putting victims into more dangerous and vulnerable situations. Because if they test your drink and say there’s nothing wrong with it, you could then leave with somebody thinking you’re fine.”
Generally speaking, these drugs are obtained illegally through the dark web, though there have been reports of ketamine being stolen from veterinary surgeons.
The government has not yet committed to producing new spiking test kits, and is currently researching the capabilities of existing ones. Another part of the Home Office’s new plans includes training more door staff to spot potential perpetrators and recognise the signs that someone has been targeted by spiking. This, however, is in the early stages. One thing that Dines thinks would really help is nationwide training for all pub and bar staff. “They need to know what to look for; how victims look and act once they’ve been spiked.”
Stamp Out Spiking runs face-to-face accredited training and 20-minute spiking awareness courses, and is campaigning to get them rolled out across major pub chains. “Some independent bars have expressed interest but we need the larger, corporate companies to make these training sessions compulsory for everyone they employ to make a real difference. I often go into pubs and ask people behind the bar if they’ve been given any training in spiking. They almost never have.
“Tackling violence against women and girls is a personal priority for me, and this government has shown time and again that we will do what is necessary to keep the public safe,” said Cleverly in a statement announcing the Home Office’s new plans, published mere hours before he made the date-rape joke. “Spiking is a perverse crime which can have a lasting impact on victims. Our comprehensive new measures are designed to help police and staff in bars, restaurants, pubs and other premises to protect victims and bring more offenders to justice.”
Beyond the facts, figures, and potential new measures, though, if we’re really going to make any progress, it’s important to remember the human stories at the heart of this issue. For spiking victims, particularly those who suffer sexual assault, the impact is often life-changing. “Walking into a pub alone even now, 18 years later, still gives me a moment of panic,” says Mark. “I have got my life back on track by using my story in a positive way, but never being able to put a face to the person that did this awful thing to me will always be something that I have to live with.”
The impact has been just as seismic for Sarah, who, two years after her attack, was summoned for jury service and assigned to a rape case. After hearing the individual charges, she had her first panic attack and was quickly dismissed from the court. “It set off a huge trigger for me of not feeling safe, and was the start of a mental breakdown, which culminated in me being suicidal four months later,” she says. Since then, Sarah has been on antidepressants and in regular therapy.
“Although I’m mentally fine now and would say I’m happy, I still have PTSD and flashbacks, and I freeze in intimate situations. It seems that even if consciously I am OK, my body hasn’t forgotten what happened to me. And honestly, I don’t know how it will.”
*Names have been changed
Rape Crisis offers support for those affected by rape and sexual abuse. You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk. If you are in the US, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673)