Drink-spike victims had one too many

Liz Porter
The Age
June 4, 2006

MANY young women who believed they were victims of drink spiking had instead drunk dangerously high levels of alcohol and had no date rape drugs in their system, ground-breaking research has shown.

Victims were more than five or six times over the .05 legal limit for driving in 37 per cent of cases. The alarming findings have prompted police and forensic doctors to call for campaigns to highlight the dangers of binge drinking to young women rather than the risks of drink-spiking.

The manager of Victoria Police's drug and alcohol strategy unit, Inspector Steve James, said the results confirmed his view that the incidence of drink-spiking had been exaggerated.

"Alcohol, in the majority of cases, is the problem. We have been saying this for years," he said.

Doctors at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine carried out a study of alcohol and drink-spiking — the first of its kind in Australia. They discovered that even though the average delay between the assault and a blood test was 11 hours, the average blood alcohol concentration in 37 per cent of the victims was between .22 and .33 at the time of the assault.

The doctors examined the files of 434 adult victims of sexual assault reported to Victoria Police between April 2002 and April 2003, identifying 76 as cases of suspected drink-spiking or "drug-facilitated sexual assault". But researchers found "unexpected" drugs in only 15 victims or 20 per cent of cases.

Moreover 13 of the 15 had also knowingly taken a range of other "psychoactive" drugs, including antidepressants and party drugs. No evidence was found of GHB or Rohypnol, two well-known "date rape" drugs.

Ninety-five per cent of victims in the survey were female, and the average age was 25.

VIFM staff forensic physician Angela Williams said the study was an attempt to find the truth about the much-publicised connection between drink-spiking and sexual assault.

Dr Williams said alcohol was the main risk to personal safety and that previous high-profile campaigns warning about the dangers of drink-spiking were tackling only a tiny area of the dangers faced by young women.

"When you teach young girls to cover their drinks and buy pretty straws or credit card-sized drink testers over the internet, you give the wrong message. It is less likely that there is an evil drink spiker lurking around ready to pop pills in your drink.

"Somebody wishing to offend looks for someone in a vulnerable situation. Having a lot of drinks and drugs on board, recreational or prescription, means you are less able to resist."

Helen Makregiorgos, manager of Centres Against Sexual Assault House, said it was impossible to generalise from the survey results because it drew on only the small proportion of victims of sexual assault who reported to police.