by I knew I was doing it right: trying to spend one last afternoon with old friends before one last night with my family before heading home. “A couple of hours,” I told my parents, who were planning a takeout pizza farewell for me.
The crowd in the pub was much larger than I had anticipated (“you’re almost never here! Why wouldn’t everyone come?” my best friend said, delighted) and it was difficult to make my way through everyone. I became anxious knowing that my family was waiting for me at home; Even more so when I saw how low my phone’s battery was. Not wanting to rely on their waning strength to get an Uber, I said goodbye to everyone and told them I was going to go outside and take a cab.
After one last trip to the bathroom and a final flurry of goodbyes, one of the crowd, an old acquaintance but never a member of our main group, stepped forward. “I need to get home too,” he said. “My wife has dinner ready. I’ll take you.”
He had half a glass of wine in his hand. She considered it briefly; regretfully. “Better not if I drive for two,” she laughed, handing it to me.
“Oooh, a shared glass? Not very Covid friendly! I joked, knocking down the remains of one.
We walk to his car. Hours later I walked 7 kilometers home. My shoe was broken and its strap was flapping uselessly. The next morning, my parents refused to talk to me, believing I had willingly chosen a wild night with old friends instead of an evening with family. I couldn’t explain to them. I put the clothes I had been wearing in a plastic bag and then, at the airport, I threw them in a public bin.
In December 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that almost 5,000 spike incidents had been reported in England and Wales, and the fact that I was over 40 when it happened to me is proof that it is not only young people. who are at risk.
With the festive season once again around the corner, the Home Office has announced its intention to make clear that enrichment is illegal, with plans to amend the Criminal Justice Bill and modernize the Crimes Against the Person Act. 1861.
However, such measures are unlikely to go far enough, says Millie*, who was drugged on her birthday in 2021; More needs to be done to make staff, police and ambulance crews aware of the fact that someone may have been a victim of an increase in crime. .
Millie was in a car park, dressed in pajamas and with two left sneakers when she was finally treated by an ambulance crew, who did not take her to hospital or perform blood tests. “My call log shows the number of times I tried to call emergency services, but couldn’t enter three digits,” she says. “It took a passerby to finally make the call; “I have listened to the recording of the call and the description that the woman makes of me, plus the sound of my screams in the background, it is very distressing.” She believes that training for first responders should teach them “professional curiosity” when responding to incidents and that they should “be aware that people who present themselves as drunk or hungover may actually have been victims of increasing crime.” .
The fact that Millie’s experience with assault was so different from mine is further indication that officers need to be made to understand that there is no “standard” when it comes to how an assault victim can behave. . Although I was unconscious for about four hours and have only a disturbingly vague memory of saying I didn’t feel well before they stopped the car and put the seat in the reclined position, Millie reports that I was largely functional, although acting so they were intensely out of place.
“My mental state went from overwhelming terror and fear to compliance,” he says. “Later I went back to my friend’s apartment and left her at the bar: normally we would never have left each other alone on a night out. Back at her house, I experienced a strange kind of euphoria, started cleaning the kitchen, and told myself that she was dancing and having fun. “This was not normal behavior.” Just a few hours later she found herself screaming and hyperventilating in the parking lot, desperately calling for help believing she was going to die.
Updating existing laws is certainly a step in the right direction that is long overdue, but both Millie and I believe that a stand-alone anti-assault law needs to be implemented to reflect the seriousness of the crime and its prevalence in a modern environment. The number of cases reported is likely to be only a fraction of the actual total. Indeed, the fact that excessive alcohol consumption can take many forms and affect individuals so differently means that many victims may be reluctant to report the crime, believing they have made a mistake and wondering if perhaps they had too much to drink. The victim-blaming culture surrounding the rise in crime contributes to this, as both bystanders and those with a duty of care too often dismiss victims as if they had brought it on themselves. How many times could a bouncer or bartender have removed a victim of a substance abuse crime from a licensed premises, then delivered them directly into the hands of the person who had attacked them?
The lack of available support offered to spike victims does nothing to improve self-doubt. “Victims of traumatic crimes should have professional mental health support available to them,” says Millie. She, like me, found her relationships affected by her experience with the jab: just as my family turned against me, in a rift that took almost a year to repair, her friend, who had also been punctured, cut ties with her, not wanting to remember the incident and fearing problems if recourse was sought.
It is also necessary to recognize that, just as it is not only women who can be victims of an enrichment crime, it is also not only men who can be the perpetrators: Annabel* was 24 years old when she was left in a container after her drink was poisoned by her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. Although she does not remember trying to call her parents, they were eventually able to find her thanks to the “Find My” feature enabled on her phone.
Now that my own daughter is of legal drinking age, changes to existing laws and the implementation of new ones can’t come soon enough. Like Millie, I want the increase in crime to be recognized, through educational campaigns that help raise awareness among perpetrators of the illegality of the act; victims were assured that they were not wrong and would be supported to seek justice and come to terms with their experience; and police officers, emergency call operators and ambulance crews deeply versed in how to help and advise victims.
“The way police approach (or fail to address) attacks is inconsistent, and not just between different forces, but from officer to officer,” says Millie, whose dealings with the police found her facing one barrier after another. “A dead body should not be necessary for the authorities to act. “A new rising crime, along with the necessary systemic change and a clear process that needs to be followed would support the way these rising crimes are being handled.”
*Names have been changed
If you or someone you know has been a victim of increasing crime, visit Spikeawareuk.org
