Drug rape: I was a victim

"I'm already here - what would you like to drink?" It was a text message from the man Janet Noakes was about to have a first date with, and it made her smile. He was punctual and considerate. This was going to be a very pleasant evening, she thought.

Fast-forward 12 hours and the night had disappeared completely from Janet's memory. She was lying in bed with her date while he grinned smugly and told her how much she had enjoyed their sado-masochistic sex.

She felt sick. She had just regained consciousness to find herself having intercourse with this man, but she had no recollection of what had gone before. Later, the horrific truth would dawn on her - she had become a victim of drug rape.

That considerate text message from a man Janet will identify only as Jeff, had actually represented the first step in a horribly premeditated plan. For, even before she had arrived, her first drink had probably been spiked. "It was an evil and diabolical thing for him to have done and I can never forgive him," Janet says.

"That text message seemed so innocent, but it meant that he had always been planning to rape me. What kind of a man would do such a thing?"

Sadly, an increasing number of them. According to the drug rape charity, the Roofie Foundation - which takes its name from the street term for Rohypnol, the most notorious rape drug - 894 victims have come forward so far in 2002, compared with 39 in 1990.

So concerned is Scotland Yard that it has launched a campaign warning women to be extra vigilant in bars, pubs and clubs, urging them never to leave their glasses unattended or to accept drinks from strangers. Just as important, it reminds drug rapists that they could be jailed for life.

Whether any of this advice could have helped Janet, a 30-year-old psychology graduate from Sussex, is unclear - this wasn't a passing stranger in a club, this was a formal date. But, as she approaches the first anniversary of the rape, she is anxious to warn other women of the dangers. "People think
of it in the way they think of murder: 'Oh, it happens to other people but it can't happen to me.' But it can. It's happening all the time.

"I simply went on a date with a nice man I had met in a clothes shop. We were chatting and I gave him my phone number. We arranged to meet later in a local pub. I had a couple of pints of lager and I remember feeling very relaxed and thinking I must have been getting a little drunk. Then I started having difficulty remembering what he was talking about. I could hear the current sentence, but I couldn't remember what he'd just said.

"I began staring at the wall and wasn't aware of what was going on around me. He sat next to me and asked if I was all right. I remember thinking that was nice of him."

That was the last coherent moment Janet can remember about the evening. She has a vague memory of a taxi ride, and nothing more. "I regained consciousness at about 7.30am and was vaguely aware of having sex," she says. "I was in my own home and my ex-husband was knocking on the door, bringing back our four-year-old son, and here I was in bed with this man.

"I was completely confused. I couldn't remember a thing. Jeff had a black eye and he said to me: 'You did that with your knee when you were getting really passionate.' I had no idea what he was talking about." After taking her son to her mother's house because she felt so ill, Janet returned to find Jeff still there.

"I felt totally drugged and I had bruises on my body," she says. "I asked him what had happened and he said I had been really into S&M [ sadomasochism] and asked why I was complaining. I am definitely not into that sort of thing.

"Then he tried to have sex with me again. When I resisted he got angry and violent. He said I had been really into it during the night, so why wasn't I now? I had no idea what he was talking about. I resisted more, then he hit me in the face. I was terrified. He refused to leave. It was like being a prisoner in my own home, but he said he wanted to stay until I accepted an apology and said I liked him. Eventually, he left at 5pm that evening."

Having investigated the issue of drug rape, Janet now believes that Jeff hung around so long to ensure any traces of the drug had disappeared from her body - in case she had decided to go the police. Rohypnol can take up to 48 hours to vanish, but the other principal drug used in rape, GHB, often called GBH, takes only about 11 hours.

When administered with alcohol, Rohypnol, a drug similar to Valium but 10 times stronger, and GHB - both virtually tasteless and odourless - can cause loss of inhibition, increased libido and memory loss. It is largely this amnesia and a lack of medical evidence that make successful prosecutions very rare. There have been only 10 convictions in the past two years.

"It is a very difficult crime to investigate," says Detective Chief Inspector Richard Walton, head of Scotland Yard's Operation Sapphire, a unit dedicated to tackling rape. "We have developed kits to help us get samples from a victim as soon as we can, but it is often too late and traces of the drug have gone. When you add that to the fact that your only witness can remember nothing about the incident, you can see the difficulties we face."

Nevertheless, the police want to encourage women who feel they may have been drugraped to report the incident. "Five or 10 years ago, women might not have been believed, but now there is a growing awareness. The important thing is to report it as soon as possible."

Janet Noakes told the police what happened to her, but she didn't press charges. It wasn't until four days later that a friend suggested she had been drug-raped, far too long to gain positive urine or blood samples. "I spoke to Jeff again and I told him I knew what he had done, and he didn't deny it," she says.

"It had a terrible effect on me. The past year has been awful - I've been ill and I can't sleep. I'm having counselling and I've taken up martial arts to boost my self-confidence. But I haven't dated a man for a year and, after what happened, I can't imagine when I will."

For more information, go to www.met.police.uk/sapphire. The victim's real name was not used in this article.