Schoolies season is here – and with it, warnings about staying safe while partying. For girls and women, this often means being told to watch their drinks while out at a bar or club to avoid them being spiked. We tend to imagine drink spiking as a male stranger adding drugs to a woman’s drink at a bar without her knowing, usually with the aim of sexually assaulting her.
This is certainly a risk. But the full picture of drink spiking is more complex and can involve intimate partners, at home, as the recent horrific case of Gisèle Pelicot in France has made clear. Yet public messaging about drink spiking continues to focus on what women should “watch out for”.
Our research shows this makes them entirely responsible for their own safety, reinforcing blame and shame if it happens. It also erases perpetrators – and why they do it – from the story. What do we know about drink spiking? We recently reviewed the global literature on sexual violence facilitated by alcohol and other drugs.
We looked at 53 studies – mostly involving US university students – and found there was inconsistent data about how common it was. Most studies focused on victim-survivors with limited attention paid to perpetration. But we found in most cases, the perpetrator was male and knew the victim-survivor.
The most common substance used to “spike” drinks is alcohol. For example, the perpetrator might buy double shots instead of single ones, without the victim-survivor knowing. Sexual vio.
