Sophie Collins was horrified to see the documentary on rape drugs on dates.
Nine months prior, on a second date, James had arranged for her to sleep in his bed. Now she knew. ‘I’d heard of these drugs but it sounded too far-fetched. He was an intelligent lawyer — or said he was. There was no strangeness. I’d always been hyper-vigilant in my choice of dates.’
As she learned more about what date rape drugs do, it became clear he’d almost certainly spiked her drink and assaulted her. The realisation, she says, ‘hit me like a bolt of lightning. I felt sick, disgusted and angry’.
While rape can cause immediate destruction for a woman, there are others who realize months or years later that they are the victims. As an increase in suspected spikings in nightclubs up and down the country continues to make headlines — and as women protest the failure of police forces to follow up reports — it’s likely more women will be feeling the cold chill of recognition, just as Sophie did.
Women recount the moment they realised they had been raped after being drugged – including Libby Behrens, 36, who woke up to a stranger having sex with her
She was 39 years old when she met James online. On their second date, they’d just finished a restaurant dinner when James went to the bar to buy her a glass of white wine. ‘I drank it slowly, as I always do, and towards the bottom of the glass I felt dizzy and nauseous,’ says Sophie, an accountant from London. ‘I told him I wasn’t feeling well.’ She has a vague recollection of James helping her into a taxi — ‘then nothing’ until she woke in the early hours of the morning, wearing just her T-shirt and pants, in James’s bed with him next to her. She was shocked that she was sharing a bed with a stranger after never having a single night stand in her life.
‘I was violently sick,’ she says. ‘I felt embarrassed. I thought it must have been a reaction to the alcohol and when he told me not to worry I assumed he had looked after me.’
However, they were still sitting on his sofa a few days after their next date when he attempted to unbutton her pants. ‘I said I wasn’t ready,’ she recalls, before James responded with a comment that now chills her. ‘He said: “Why not? You enjoyed it last time.” ’
Sophie recalls: ‘Looking back, there was a smugness, almost an arrogance, to his words. He knew he could boast because I might not know what he meant — and if I did clock on, what on earth could I do about it?’
Although she ended the relationship, she told herself he’d been joking — until she watched the documentary and realised the horrific, most likely, scenario was that he had drugged and raped her — ‘and his arrogance was such that he bragged about it to me on the following date’. She says: ‘In my gut I feel it’s the only explanation for my passing out into an unconscious state for hours, with zero memories, for the first time ever.’
Deciding not to go to the police, because it would be her word against his, ‘and clearly he’d deny it’, she adds: ‘Because I was unconscious I don’t have flashbacks. I’m not haunted. But I still feel angry.’
Home Office figures show 14 per cent of people — and a third of those under 16 — waited longer than six months to report their rape. Many more don’t report their rapist at all.
Home Office figures show 14 per cent of people — and a third of those under 16 — waited longer than six months to report their rape (file image)
There are many reasons why a delayed realization can occur, including the fact that drugs like GHB or Rohypnol can affect memory. Last month, a number of cases of spiking were reported in various universities throughout the country. Some of these cases were reported by women who claimed that they had been inject with unknown substances.
These incidents sparked protests and nightclub boycotts across more than 40 cities. The Sussex Police has revealed that three men were arrested in connection to the spiking attack.
It took just a few sips of whisky at a party for Libby Behrens’s hitherto clear recollections of the night to begin to splinter.
Later, she would sit down with a therapist and tell how, after blacking out she came around in her car to find her jeans around the ankles and a man standing astride.
When she tried to push him off, he said ‘you’re loving it’.
She cried out of shock and confusion afterward. It was the therapist who, looking up from her notes, first asked: ‘… and you don’t think that’s rape?’
I thought the fact that he’d stopped meant it wasn’t rape
For ten years, Libby, 36, hadn’t thought what happened was rape. She’d blamed herself for getting drunk and not locking her car. She’d assumed, even while barely conscious, that she must have consented.
Two years ago, after reliving her experience to a professional, the truth finally dawned. ‘I had always known something wasn’t right, but wasn’t sure what. I don’t think I’d have come to that realisation myself,’ says Libby, an operations director from Northampton, who spent a decade blocking out a festering sense of anger that culminated in a breakdown.
‘I cried as I realised. It may sound strange, but it was a tremendous relief. I felt my life hadn’t been messed up over nothing. I had a legitimate reason.’
The brain will often try to block or recalibrate memories of an attack when there are still some. ‘Memory fragments in such a way to protect us, as part of our survival instinct,’ explains psychotherapist Heather Darwall-Smith.
Psychotherapist Heather Darwall-Smith said victims default to thinking they’ve done something wrong as part of the survival process, because it puts them in control (file image)
‘There is also an element of denial. Victims default to thinking they’ve done something wrong as part of the survival process, because it puts them in control.’
Sometimes, the truth is only revealed years later by victims who are triggered by a smell or sound that reminds them about the attack. This unlocks a discovery that Heather says can be even more shocking than if they had known it all along.
Libby was 24 years old and was backpacking in New Zealand. She is a sensible drinker and can recall the evening well until 11pm when she was offered whisky by someone.
‘After I drank it, I felt really odd — not drunk as I’d ever felt before, but out of control and fuzzy. I remember I was frenetically sociable, which was out of character,’ she says.
She has only vague recollections from then on, before she blacked out altogether, coming round in the back of her Honda Civic on the drive outside, where she’d planned to sleep, with a stranger having sex with her.
Libby, who had waived her anonymity, panicked and recalls telling him twice to stop. After the second time, she says, he retorted ‘whatever’ and left.
‘I broke down and cried,’ she says. She didn’t tell the police. ‘I thought the fact he’d stopped meant it wasn’t rape and that I’d put myself in that position,’ says Libby, for whom the only explanation for her altered state of mind was that she’d drunk too much. ‘I assumed if I’d been drugged I would have passed out completely, but I had patchy recollections of the night.’
I didn’t understand why I woke up with my jeans unbuttoned
In fact, GHB, a Class C drug and odourless liquid formerly used as an anaesthetic, and Rohypnol, a depressant, don’t always cause blackouts.
In smaller quantities, symptoms can include numbness, out of body experiences and loss of inhibition — which would explain Libby’s behaviour. Her attitude to sex and relationships had changed when she returned to England. ‘I’d date, and sleep with people, but didn’t let anyone close emotionally,’ she says.
Heather explains that this is a common behavior for victims of rape. ‘There is a split between those who are numb and not interested in sex, and those who sleep with lots of people to try to feel better.’
Libby added. ‘I was angrier, but pushed it down.’ For years, she blotted out the nagging disquiet with exercise and meditation but, in 2019, aged 34, she saw an episode of U.S. drama series Veronica Mars, in which the protagonist is drugged with GHB, attends a party she can scarcely remember and gathers accounts from people there to piece together the evening.
Heather said the behaviour of rape victims is split between those who are numb and not interested in sex, and those who sleep with lots of people to try to feel better (file image)
That’s how she registered she’d been drugged. ‘I realised date rape drugs didn’t always black out memory entirely and that this had happened to me.’
She broke down shortly after, exhausted from a job she was at risk of losing. ‘One day I lay on a foetal position on the floor and couldn’t stop crying,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t eat or sleep. It was probably because of work. I didn’t register that there could be another cause.’
Heather says this is often how women who don’t realise they’ve been raped present to her. ‘They come to me because they have other problems — with sleep, depression, anxiety, IBS and migraines — almost a cluster of symptoms they can’t explain,’ she says. ‘I often work out what’s happened when they haven’t. It’s not for me to tell them, but for that awareness to emerge.’
Then Libby’s anger started to surface. ‘I’d drink alone to forget my feelings and pick unnecessary fights with men, to whom I felt a general hatred even when they’d done nothing wrong.
‘Luckily, therapy helped curb my behaviour. My therapist said sometimes it takes 25 years to address a rape — I’d done well to accept this horrible thing had happened after ten.’
I felt like a slag in my 20s and didn’t trust men
Shifting attitudes towards the idea of consent have also forced many women to view historic sexual ordeals with a different lens —realising what they once viewed as consensual was anything but.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor (42), revealed that she was raped at the age of 17 by an older musician. She didn’t believe she had a ‘case’ then because in the 1990s rape was equated with aggression and ‘no one had pinned me down or shouted to make me comply’.
Heather recalls a 50-year-old client ‘shaken to pieces’ after watching last year’s film, Promising Young Woman, starring Carey Mulligan, in which the protagonist seeks revenge for the rape of her best friend years earlier.
‘My client realised she’d been raped at university 30 years earlier. Ever since she’d had problems with sex and developed OCD but didn’t correlate any of this with the fact she’d been raped. She thought she’d gone along with it.’
The feeling of powerlessness experienced by most victims of rape is only increased when they don’t have any recollection of the assault (file image).
It can only increase the feeling of powerlessness that most rape victims feel by not having any recollection.
‘It’s horrid having no details,’ says Tanya Thompson, who was raped while drugged aged just 15. Now 30, it was two years before she realised she’d been raped and she only started to come to terms with the attack during therapy three years ago. Tanya, a Leeds-based account manager, never drank and was a virgin. She was about to watch a match when Jake, her attacker, drugged her. Jake was one of three boys she and her female friends had met in the past.
He mocked her for being ‘boring’ when she turned down alcohol. Under pressure, she agreed to accept half a pint of fizzy orange juice from him, which she assumed contained vodka.
‘The next thing I remember I was being sick,’ she says. Her next memory was of a man lying on top of her: ‘I can’t remember feeling fear. It was almost as if I had gone completely numb. Then I remember crying uncontrollably.’
Tanya arrived in a bedroom by herself at dawn. Jake — she later learned — had told her friends she’d left the party.
As she walked home, the gnawing suspicion that something ‘wasn’t right’ grew greater by the hour. ‘I didn’t understand why I’d been crying and had woken up with my jeans unbuttoned. I thought I must have got really drunk and blamed myself.’
It was only weeks later, when one of her friends told her Jake had told his friends he’d ‘shagged’ her, that she realised they’d had sex. Again, she assumed she was responsible: ‘I felt stupid and ashamed — that I must have been up for it and it was my fault.
‘Whether he deliberately stayed away from me, I don’t know, but he seemed to disappear,’ she says — until one evening, two years later, when he walked into a mutual friend’s house where she was watching a film on the sofa.
‘My heart thumped. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t move,’ she recalls. She was unable to move because of the shock and Tanya shared with her friends all she remembered about that night.
‘They were horrified. They explained to me that it was rape, and that I was unlikely have blacked out from one alcoholic drink. I went home and cried,’ she recalls. ‘I felt relief, but anger, too.
‘I wish I’d reported him but, at the time, I felt it was his word against mine. One of my friends confronted him, but he said I’d been “up for it”. He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.’
Her attitude towards her body changed. ‘I felt like I was a slag throughout my 20s.
‘I didn’t trust men. I didn’t like being touched and I’d never let anyone buy me a drink. I needed to be in control.’
Tanya was in therapy three years after her abusive relationship ended. She only then realized the ramifications. However, it has cast a shadow on her life.
‘I hate him for what he did to me. Not knowing made me feel even more violated.’
- For support and advice, visit rapecrisis.org.uk. Or call the national helpline at 0808 802 9999.
- Some details and names have changed