DRUG RAPISTS OFTEN ACT IN PAIRS, POLICE WARN

Rapists who use drugs to render their victims unconscious often act in
pairs, with one distracting their prey while another slips the
amnesiac pill into their drink, Scotland Yard warned yesterday. On
occasion, girlfriends will work alongside the rapist to lure their
victim into a false sense of security.

Gangs of rapists are also at work sometimes videoing each other
committing multiple rape and sexual assault after the gang leader has
laced their victim's drink.

"I've had a lot of [victims] from the Liverpool and north-west area
talking about being attacked by a gang of people who contain women as
well as men," said the Met's Detective Chief Inspector Peter Sturman.
"And they're also acting in twos and threes."

The details of how drug-assisted rapes are committed were revealed
yesterday with the publication of the first report into a crime that
police believe, while not an epidemic, is on the increase.

The Home Office-funded report questioned 123 victims of drug-assisted
assaults, including 14 men. It makes 71 recommendations, including
24-hour rape treatment centres at hospitals and a ban on victims being
questioned on their sexual history in court, which are now being
scrutinised by ministers and police.

The report, Drug Assisted Sexual Assault, the result of more than a
year's research, says rapists were often good-looking, presentable
men, who were sufficiently persuasive or charming to pose no apparent
threat to their victims - one in five of whom was a university student
and 42% of whom were women in their 30s.

In contrast to conceptions about drug rape, 70% of the victims knew
their attacker, with 27% citing them as a friend, 15% as a fellow
student, and 15% as a work colleague. Nearly half the victims were
drugged in pubs or clubs, but 12% were given rape drugs in their home
and 10% on a university campus.

The main drugs used - sedatives which can induce amnesia and which
include the dance drug GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid) - were
administered via alcohol in over half the cases, and slipped into a
cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate in 11% of cases.

One in five victims could not remember the attack and around 70% felt
physically unable to resist. Many of the rapists took photographs or
videos of their victims during the attack to use for pornographic
purposes, to display on the internet, or as a trophy.

DCI Sturman, the report's author, said it was surprising that so many
of the women were in their 30s. "This goes against the idea it's young
girls in clubs and pubs. These are women who are perhaps getting back
to socialising after the end of a reasonably long-term stable
relationship, and who are more trusting and less aware than younger
women of the threat of drug assisted sexual assaults."

Three court cases have highlighted the use of rape drugs, including
that of male nurse Kevin Cobb, who was convicted last month of killing
a nursing sister after spiking her drink, and of raping two women
patients after drugging them. Brothers Graham and Simon Laskey plied
dozens of victims with sedatives, sleeping pills and the rape drug
Rohypnol, which was also believed to have been used by the serial
rapist DJ Richard Baker.

It was abuse of her body - and her mind

When Nina Richards, a 33-year-old PR consultant, met a client in a
smart central London hotel bar for a drink, she little imagined it
would be anything more than a run-of-the-mill working evening.

But, that night, in November 1998, something happened: the rape of her
body - and of her mind.

A friend of her client's slipped what she believes was GHB and
Rohypnol into her drink. This caused her to lose consciousness and her
memory. "I have no idea about six hours," she said yesterday. "It was
a rape of my mind. My body is something else, but what upset me most
was taking all my powers of control."

She said when her client's friend arrived, she went to the toilet "and
thought: my goodness, I feel light-headed". She returned and finished
her drink. Her client, who is not implicated, said he was going to
bed.

"That was the last thing I remember," she said. "The next thing I
knew, I woke up face down. I don't know whether I was tied up but it
was as if I was crucified.

"Suddenly, I couldn't move, I felt really heavy - and there was this
guy there who was naked. I thought: who is he? I've never seen him
before."

She continued: "He raped me - and I was awake. It was really weird,
like an out of body experience - but, because you know what's going
on, you blame yourself."

She went to her GP, but failed to go to the police until a week later.
By then, there was no trace of any drug in her system.