The new danger for women

by time news

London / BerlinThe statements made by the women are terrifying. And they are disturbing because they portray a nightmare: unnoticed, you are put out of action where you really only want to party. So-called knockout drops or other drugs make the victim willless and make them easy prey for the perpetrator.

In Great Britain, the term “spiking” occurs when narcotics are mixed into the drink. A new form, the so-called needle spiking, is currently causing uncertainty, in which the victims are injected with sedating substances into the body with a needle prick. The perpetrators are focusing on the nightlife, which has only just picked up speed after the long Corona months. British police recorded 198 incidents involving beverages and 56 reports of spiking by injections nationwide in September and October. The attacks took place both in clubs and at private parties, and the victims were mostly young women.

Reports were particularly high in Nottinghamshire, where police investigated 15 separate incidents in less than a month of young women and men being stung with “something sharp”. Checks are now carried out in the county of central England on weekends.

AFP/Tolga Akmen

Violence against women: There is growing protest in the UK.

The British women, already startled by the gruesome murders of the Londoners Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, put up a fight. They start campaigns, demonstrations and petitions. And they describe their experiences: Mia Davson, a student at Loughborough University, told the BBC about a celebration with her cheerleading team. The 20-year-old had decided not to drink much and was enjoying her evening until she suddenly felt uncomfortable. She turned to her friend for help before she collapsed.

“I was out of action and unresponsive for about an hour,” said Davson. She believes she became a spiking victim and has since felt unsafe going out. 19-year-old Helen Lavery told the broadcaster about a night out when girls held their arms to avoid getting stung. Lavery and Davson are involved in the Girls Night In campaign, which currently has supporters in around 50 locations, including London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bath, Liverpool and Bristol.

The campaign has also drawn criticism for suggesting that women should stay home instead of going out. The members organize themselves through WhatsApp groups and understand that encouraging women to stay at home may seem like a contradiction at first. However, the aim is to signal to club owners that they need to better ensure the safety of their guests. “We want to get out again,” said Ally Valero, a student who started the nightlife boycott in Nottingham. “But we want to go out in a safer environment.”

Since last week, the public pressure on organizers and security authorities has increased again. Angry demonstrations broke out in more than 40 university towns, from St Andrews in Scotland to Brighton on the south coast of England. 21-year-old Lucy Nichols, who opened the protest in Manchester in front of at least 1,000 young people, spoke of an emergency and a downright spiking epidemic: “Every single woman here will have a story about her or one of her friends who have been spied on . “

The location of the demonstration was not chosen by chance: A 29-year-old is currently on trial in Manchester who is said to have knocked a young woman unconscious with drops in September and then raped her. The man is suspected of having first poured something into his victim’s drink in a club and later attacking her on the way home.

With spiking incidents on the rise in the UK, 24-year-old Hannah Thomson from Glasgow has started a petition. In it, she demands a legal requirement from the government, according to which the guests should be searched before they enter a nightclub. The petition has already been signed by more than 170,000 people. “The response is so much bigger than I would have thought,” says Thomson. The controls could, in their opinion, be carried out with metal detectors or by scanning. “I’d rather be scanned than get a needle in the back.”

Berlin: 279 “co-active agent acts” in 2019 and 2020

Worries about being secretly sedated with drugs in clubs and bars have long been an issue – also in Germany and Berlin. Figures from the capital are hard to come by, but at least you can search the police database specifically for terms such as “Liquid Ecstasy” (GHB), Ko-Drops, ketamine or Rohypnol in connection with criminal charges. The analysis shows that in 2012 and 2013 there were around 150 crimes in which the above-mentioned means were used. A slight decrease followed until 2016, after which the numbers rose again. The search spewed out 230 deeds for 2018, 118 in 2019 and 161 in 2020. According to the police, 110 crimes were recorded in the first quarter of this year.

Of the total of 279 “co-active agent offenses” in 2019 and 2020, according to a response from the Senate Interior Administration to a parliamentary question, 100 are victim offenses such as assault, robbery and sexual offenses. Of these, 20 acts took place in bars and pubs and the same number in discos.

That’s what experts from Berlin say

Cases of needle injections have not yet become known in the capital, say both the police and Rüdiger Schmolke from Sonar, a cooperation project of the Berlin prevention and addiction aid projects. And you don’t know how often spiking occurs either. “At irregular intervals we are told of cases in which guests in Berlin club life suddenly felt a strong sedative effect without consciously taking psychoactive substances beforehand.” Whether this was actually due to spiking remains mostly unclear. However, awareness of the problem is very high in the capital’s party scene.

“We regularly address the knockout issue at our training courses for club operators and employees,” says Schmolke. The bar staff and the security ensure that people who appear to be severely numb are spoken to before they leave the club and asked about their relationship with their companion. There are also always tips not to leave drinks unattended.

The Berlin Club Commission currently sees less the unconscious administration of substances as the greatest challenge, but rather the increasing popularity of GHB in certain scenes. “We speak of clubs as safer spaces. At the same time, we are observing that a drug that is often overdosed is spreading, has a particularly high potential for addiction and risks that are often underestimated by consumers, ”according to a current statement from the association. One speaks therefore decidedly against the consumption of GHB in clubs and at events.

A current poster campaign and social media campaign for GHB-free clubs, initiated by the Suicide Club in Friedrichshain, also go well with this. A young Irish woman died there in August after a club night. The cause was presumably GHB – a drug in which only a few milliliters make the difference between high and overdosing.

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