‘I had my drink spiked and was raped – the crime needs its own law to protect victims like me’

I knew I was cutting it fine – trying to squeeze in a last afternoon with old friends ahead of a final night with my family, before leaving for home. “A couple of hours,” I said to my parents, who were planning a takeaway pizza send-off for me.

The crowd at the pub was much larger than I’d anticipated (“you’re hardly ever here! Why wouldn’t everyone come?” my best friend said, delightedly) and it was hard to make my way around everybody. I became anxious, knowing that my family was expecting me home; more so when I saw how low my phone battery was. Not wanting to rely on its dwindling strength to get an Uber, I said goodbye to everyone and told them I was going to head out onto the street and hail a taxi.

After one last bathroom trip and a final flurry of farewells, one of the crowd – an old acquaintance, but never one of our core group – stepped forward. “I need to get home as well,” he said. “My wife has dinner ready – I’ll give you a lift.”

He had a half-glass of wine in his hand. He considered it briefly; regretfully. “Better not if I’m driving for two,” he laughed, passing it to me.

“Oooh, a shared glass? Not very Covid-friendly!” I joked, downing its remnants in one.

We walked to his car. Hours later, I walked 7km home. My shoe was broken, its strap flapping uselessly. The following morning, my parents refused to speak to me, believing I’d wilfully chosen a wild night out with old friends over an evening with family. I couldn’t explain to them. I bundled the clothes I had been wearing up into a plastic bag and later, at the airport, disposed of them in a public bin.

In December 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that almost 5,000 spiking incidents had been reported across England and Wales – and the fact that I was in my late 40s when it happened to me is proof of the fact that it’s not only young people who are at risk.

With the festive season upon us again, the Home Office has announced its intention to make it clear that spiking is illegal, with plans to amend the Criminal Justice Bill and to modernise the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.

Yet such measures are unlikely to go far enough says Millie*, who was spiked on her birthday in 2021 – more needs to be done to make staff, police and ambulance crews aware of the fact that someone may have been the victim of a spiking crime.

Millie was in a car park, dressed in her pyjamas and wearing two left trainers when she was eventually attended by an ambulance crew, who didn’t take her to hospital, nor administer blood tests. “My call register shows the number of times I tried to dial emergency services, but was unable to put the three digits in,” she says. “It took a passerby to eventually make the call; I have listened to the recording of the call and the woman’s description of me, plus the sound of me screaming in the background, is highly distressing.” She feels training for first-responders must teach “professional curiosity” when attending incidents and that they should “be aware that people presenting as drunk or hungover may in fact have been the victim of a spiking crime”.

The fact that Millie’s spiking experience was so different from mine is further indication that officers need to be made to understand that there is no ‘standard’ when it comes to how a victim of spiking may behave. While I was unconscious for around four hours and have only an eerily vague recollection of saying that I didn’t feel right, before the car was pulled over and the seat put into a reclining position, Millie reports being largely functional, although acting in ways that were intensely out of character.

“My state of mind went from overwhelming terror and fear to compliance,” she says. “Later, I walked back to my friend’s flat, leaving her at the bar: we would never have ordinarily left one another alone on a night out. Back at her place, I experienced a strange kind of euphoria, starting to clean the kitchen and telling myself that she was out dancing and having fun. This was not normal behaviour.” It was only hours later that she found herself, screaming and hyperventilating in the car park, desperately calling for help in the belief that she was going to die.

Updating existing laws is a long overdue step in the right direction, certainly, but both Millie and I believe that an independent law against spiking needs to be implemented to reflect the severity of offence and its prevalence in a modern setting. The number of cases that get reported is likely only a fraction of the real total. Indeed, the fact that spiking can take various forms and affect individuals so differently means that many victims may be reluctant to report the crime, believing themselves to have been in the wrong, wondering if perhaps they did have too much to drink. The culture of victim-blaming that surrounds spiking crime contributes to this, with both bystanders and those with a duty of care all too frequently dismissing spiking victims as having brought it on themselves. How many times might a victim of spiking crime have been removed from licensed premises by a doorman or bartender, only to be delivered straight into the hands of the person who has spiked them?

The self-doubt isn’t helped by the lack of readily available support offered to victims of spiking. “Victims of traumatic crime should have professional mental health support made available to them,” says Millie. She, like me, found her relationships affected by her experience of spiking: just as my family turned against me, in a rift that took almost a year to repair, her friend, who had also been spiked, severed ties with her, not wanting to be reminded of the incident and fearing trouble if recourse was sought.

It needs also to be recognised that, just as it’s not only women who can be victims of a spiking crime, it’s not only men who may be the perpetrators: Annabel* was 24 when she was left in a skip after her drink was spiked by her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. Although she has no memory of trying to phone her parents, they were eventually able to find her, thanks to the enabled ‘Find My’ on her phone.

With my own daughter now of a legal drinking age, changes to existing laws and the implementation of new ones can’t come soon enough. Like Millie, I want to see spiking crime recognised, via educational campaigns that help to make perpetrators aware of the illegality of the act; victims reassured that they are not in the wrong and that they will be be supported in seeking justice and coming to terms with their experience; and police officers, emergency call operators and ambulance crews thoroughly versed in how to help and advise victims.

“The way police deal (or don’t deal) with spiking is inconsistent – and not just between different forces, but from officer to officer,” says Millie, whose dealings with the police found her facing one barrier after another. “It shouldn’t take a dead body to make the authorities take action. A new spiking offence, along with the systemic change needed and a clear process that needs to be followed would support the way these spiking crimes are being handled.”

*Names have been changed

If you or someone you know has been the victim of a spiking crime, visit spikeawareuk.org

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