Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
SPIKING TERROR IN CLUBS FOR 20 YRS
Needle perverts drugging victims in early 2000s
NEEDLE attacks to drug young women in nightclubs have been going on for two decades.
The Mirror has uncovered cases in Merseyside, Swansea, Leicester, and Birmingham dating back to 2001.
Victims said they were jabbed before feeling as if they had been drugged.
No record could be found of any alleged attacker being charged.
It comes as police action on attacks on women and girls is scrutinised in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens.
The historical attacks mirror incidents reported earlier this month in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Nottingham. Police are
also probing a reported attack in a club in Exeter on Saturday.
In the earliest case, the Mirror found a woman reported being injected by a stranger during a night out at a club in 2001 in St Helens, Merseyside.
She suffered dizziness, high temperature and a raging thirst and was given precautionary hepatitis treatment. Her mother said at the time: “This is our worst nightmare come true.”
In 2002, a 20-year-old woman said she ignored a man who tried to talk to her while she danced in the Escape club in Swansea.
She added: “A man who was dancing nearby said to me something like ‘cheer up love’. Two minutes later I felt something going into my arm.” It left her bloodied, she said.
In 2004, an 18-year-old woman said she was injected in a Leicester nightclub. After feeling sick, she also had precautionary hepatitis treatment in hospital. She told the Mirror: “I felt violated and like I couldn’t just go out and have fun.” In 2013, two men were arrested after a needle attack in Birmingham but released without charge. Sarah Crew, of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told MPS this week plainclothes officers might be deployed in clubs.