Another Week In Scotland’s Upmarket Bars – And 2 Women Will Claim To Be ‘Drug-Raped’

Up to 100 nurses, lawyers, civil servants and other professional people are contacting Scotland’s national date-rape hotline every year to report being sexually assaulted after having their drinks spiked.

{mosimage}The group Crisis, which operates the country’s only dedicated drug-rape support service, says it is receiving an average of two calls a week, the overwhelming majority coming from professional women who claim they were drugged in wine bars.

The charity says Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Helensburgh are three particular hotspots.

Campaigners say the true scale of the crime is far higher, with some estimates putting the figure at as many as 1,300 victims a year. But police are sceptical about the claims, insisting the common denominator in the cases investigated is the large amount of alcohol drunk by the complainer.

Jane Cumming, from Crisis, the Scottish arm of national date-rape charity The Roofie Foundation, which launched the hotline in 2005, said: “The profile of victims has changed. The calls we are getting are definitely increasingly from the professional classes.

“Most of the drugging appears to be happening in wine bars rather than nightclubs or your regular pubs. The perpetrator is somebody who can access places where professional people will be, someone who can blend into a professional environment.

“We’re not talking about guys with shellsuits.”

She added: “We get calls from all over the country but Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Helensburgh seems to be hotspots.”

Despite the number of reports, very few people in Scotland have been prosecuted for committing date rape.

Part of the reason for this is the evidential hurdles to be overcome, with date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol and GHB only staying in the system for a short time, from a few hours to three days.

But police also believe the scale of the problem is less than campaigners claim. A controversial study by police in England and Wales found that, of 120 cases of alleged date rape, none showed evidence of Rohypnol and only two had GHB present.

The tests also found evidence of alcohol in 52 per cent of cases and about one-fifth of the alleged victims were two to three times over the drink-drive limit.

However, another study carried out in an English nightclub found evidence that several drinks had been spiked with date-rape drugs.

GHB, or gammahydroxybutyrate, is not licensed for medical use in Britain, but is used by doctors and dentists in other countries as an anaesthetic. On the club scene in Britain, it has a reputation for lowering sexual inhibition.

One senior Scottish police officer told The Scotsman the problem was being vastly overstated. He said: “We have carried out lots of investigations over the last couple of years and the common denominator in almost all of them is the alcohol.”

He added: “I’m not saying drug rape doesn’t happen. It clearly does, but certainly not on the scale that current thinking would have you believe.”

But Dr Sharon Cowan, a lecturer in criminal law at Edinburgh University, said: “There’s a perception that if you go out and get drunk you then have to face up to all the consequences. People think that if young women are going out and getting drunk, then it’s their fault.”

She said the study carried out by English police was not large enough for major conclusions to be reached and called for thorough research to determine the true scale of the issue. “What we do know is the number of people who contact Rape Crisis and other groups to report the problem. We can’t ignore that.”

Last week The Scotsman reported the case of Rohail Spall who was jailed for two years after he was convicted of spiking a woman’s drink with a powerful sedative.

A number of measures have been taken to encourage people to keep an eye on their drink. Students in Wales have been given bungs called Spika Stoppas that fit into bottles, and undercover police at Dundee University’s student union placed swizzle sticks in unattended glasses bearing the slogan “Next Time It Could Be Drugs”.

FIRST GHB CONVICTION

DAVID Symon was jailed for five years in June 2004 after he repeatedly had sex with a woman after giving her a date-rape drug at a party.

The case was believed to be the first successful rape prosecution in Scotland involving the drug GHB.

The victim, a 21-year-old mother, described in evidence how she took a drink from a bottle Symon offered her and felt her head was going to “explode”. Symon, 32, who maintained his innocence, was told by the judge, Roger Craik, QC, the offence was extremely serious, and aggravated by the use of the drug.

GHB is not licensed for medical use in Britain, but in countries such as Italy and the US it is used as an anaesthetic.

‘ONE IN 25 DRINKS’

IN 2003, police posing as glass collectors at a nightclub in Chelmsford, Essex, tested 200 drinks and found that eight had been spiked with date-rape drugs.

Analysts set up screening devices at the club to examine the drinks, which were taken mainly from women.

Traces of drugs such as GHB (gamma- hydroxybutyrate), valium, tamazepam and Rohypnol were found. Most are colourless, odourless and tasteless, so the victims were unaware that their drink had been tampered with.

That year, more than 1,000 women and men (13 per cent of the victims were male) in Britain reported being raped while drugged.