Spike victim: ‘It wasn’t the first time’
‘I just remember laying in the bath saying I couldn’t feel my legs’
A victim of drink spiking says she decided not to tell police what had happened because she assumed they wouldn’t care.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, said she didn’t report the incident, at Maidstone’s The Source Bar, because she was not assaulted.
The 24-year-old said while she made it home safely on the night, she later had to attend A&E.
She explained is not the first time it has happened while on a night out in the town, and doesn’t think people know how common it is.
It comes as Kent Police data revealed no one in the county has been charged following reports of drink and needle spiking over the last five years.
The data also shows there were 117 reports of drink spiking last year.
The woman, from Gravesend, said she was with a male friend at the town centre club on April 1, when the incident happened.
She separated from her friend and began chatting to a group of men who brought her a shot and a whisky and coke.
When her friend joined her
again, he held onto her drink while she went to the toilet.
She said: “He text me while I was in the toilet and he just said to me, ‘Is this drink okay?’.
“He said he thought something was up when I was in the toilet because there was this fella lingering outside for me. All his mates were gone.
“He drank a bit of the drink and he said he felt like something was not right, and then he
looked at him, shook his head at him, and then put the drink on the floor.”
The man disappeared and the pair carried on their night at Bierkeller in Bank Street. Although she stuck to drinking water at the venue, she says she felt like she was getting “progressively more and more drunk”.
She said: “My legs just kind of kept bolting up on me and I kept
falling over. I don’t remember getting in a taxi. I do remember being on the M20 and waking up after passing out to be sick.
“I just remember laying in the bath saying I couldn’t feel my legs, and every time my friend sat me up to get me out, I threw up again.”
She says she didn’t think she had been spiked until the following day when she experienced pins and needles in her arms,
hands and legs.
After calling 111 she was told to go to A&E, but a triage nurse at the William Harvey Hospital said she was likely still hungover and staff wouldn’t be carrying out any tests to see if she was spiked, advising her to report it to the police.
She says she carried on feeling ill a week after the incident.
When asked why she didn’t report what happened to the police, she said: “I think unless you have been raped or sexually assaulted, I don’t think they care if you’ve been spiked.”
Data from a Freedom of Information request showed there were 100 more drink spiking reports last year than in 2020 in Kent, although nightspots were closed due to Covid restrictions for most of the year.
So far this year, there have been 45 reports. More than half the investigations since 2017 have been closed because no suspect has been identified.
Det Ch Supt Emma Banks, Kent Police’s head of public protection, said: “For every incident of drink or needle spiking which is reported to Kent Police a thorough investigation is carried out in order to understand what has taken place, where an offence is suspected we will do everything we can to identify those responsible and provide support and assurance to victims.”
The Source Bar declined to comment.