Needle spiking again...

[dowie]

I thought this had gone away after the "spike" in cases of #MeToo claims when a bunch of girls who'd presumably drunk a bit too in various cities decided that they too had been jabbed with a needle, strangely these all occurred within days of each other following some press reports.

Now it's on the BBC website again:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-59959694

A parliamentary committee also heard calls for more staff training, easier ways to report attacks and spiking to be made a specific offence.

The House of Commons' Home Affairs Committee opened an inquiry into spiking incidents in December.

Ms Owen, a French and Spanish student at the University of Nottingham, said she went with her friends to Pryzm nightclub in Nottingham city centre, but cannot remember anything else from the evening.

She said she was found on her own in a takeaway, and in the morning found a pin ***** mark on her leg.

There is an explanation thrown in too as there is the obvious question of why would someone spike girls and then... nothing happens to them other than the claimed effect of being spiked (which is rather similar to getting very drunk).

While speaking to MPs, she was asked about what she thought was the motivation for the attack.

She said: "For humour, for comedic effect.

"It's a question I have asked myself - what's the gain from this, what drives somebody to inject somebody with a drug?

"It's a sadistic feeling someone must have, to do it for fun when it is so dangerous.

"It's mind-blowing someone could drive themselves to that act."

Strangely enough despite all these incidents, there doesn't seem to have been a single person caught? Unless I've perhaps missed that? Presumably, the nightclubs themselves have CCTV yet I've not heard anything about even CCTV footage of an unknown suspect being seen "spiking" someone with a needle. It doesn't even seem particularly practical - spiking, where it occurs, is most commonly done with alcohol.

Though when studied it's turned out that claims of spiking are often false - the vast majority of the time someone claiming to have been spiked just got too drunk. This sort of claim is taking it one step further... none of them seem to claim to have seen anyone inject them, the claims are that they woke up and are adamant they were spiked and then found a small mark on their leg etc..

Yet there doesn't seem to be much in the way of critical coverage of this. Are journalists to worried about causing outrage if they question the obvious post "#MeToo" - the right on stance is to "believe women: etc...

 

[dowie]

I only found one man arrested, back in Oct last year but nothing more after a quick interweb search -

https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/19/nott...n-spiked-with-needles-in-nightclubs-15447620/

Good spot. I guess they didn't find anything to charge him then. Perhaps he was in close proximity for a bit on the CCTV or something?

Nottinghamshire Police said a man had since been bailed but the force did not say which incident the arrest was in relation to, the BBC reports.

Detectives are now looking at toxicology reports and trawling through CCTV footage.

It comes as another nightclub in the city, Stealth, said it had also received reports of two women feeling unwell, who suspected they had been spiked.

I don't doubt that there exist in the UK some lunatics who might go and do such a thing, the notion of it being so widespread that all these cases appeared within days just seems so unlikely. Especially with not a single one of them caught. Also are they all supposed to have done it alone or is this supposed to be a thing groups of lads are into - just bizare.

 

[dowie]

The needle spiking thing is a strange one. There used to be reports of HIV positive nutters doing similar in clubs, but in terms of drugging people it seems extremely outlandish.

That seemed like an urban legend too - I remember in 6th form we had a scare about people doing that in a local club etc.. but it came from some e-mails being forwarded by worried parents. Given these same sorts of boomers are prone to forwarding anything/believing anything at face value and or posting nonsense on facebook "I declare facebook has no right to my data... post this on your timeline by X date" etc.. I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

Supposedly they'd also leave a note in the "victim's" pocket saying "congrats, you've joined the club, you've got HIV" or something to that effect...

Was there really a spate of people being injected though? Can anyone shed any light on that one - links to people actually being convicted of this stuff or credible reports of people actually getting jabbed then testing positive etc...?

 

[dowie]

I’d presume the increased measures and noise of it was an acceptance that it happened?
Either way - not the venues fault but at least precautions are being taken against it.

Perhaps more that they need to be seen to take it seriously, certainly local politicians will be and clubs and bars probably don't want to be seen to just dismiss this stuff. Spiking more generally can of course occur and so I wouldn't expect them to have a blase attitude in general to it even if 90%+ of the cases where people believe they have been spiked actually turn out to be people just getting too drunk themselves... that some genuine cases exist is reason to act.

This needle thing though seems soo implausible, even if there was some nutter going around jabbing people the additional claims that sporadically came out across various locations in the UK and Ireland that other drunk girls also woke up with a mark on their leg (not exactly uncommon) and then believed they too had been jabbed with a syringe just seem rather unlikely. Throw in the commentary from experts re: the reality that you can't just quickly jab someone with some substance like that anyway, people would be well aware (even if drunk) if you slipped a syringe into them and tried to inject several ml of some drug over the course of a few seconds.

 

[dowie]

People being stabbed with contaminated needles definitely happened a couple of times in the town I grew up in - I remember the news articles.

Im not sure that’s definitive, in 20 years time someone could say needle spiking of girls definitely happened because they remembered reading (these current) news articles. Yet as we can see these news stories are rather sus!

 

[dowie]

Just a quick bump, has anyone seen any stories about this phenomenon recently?

Have they ever caught the supposed guy or guys who "spiked" a bunch of girls with actual needles in multiple cities during the same period (not a single incident apparently caught on CCTV despite the presence of CCTV being ubiquitous in bars and clubs around the UK)?

Almost as if one report started a brief trend and others followed.

To be fair it wasn't this thread but in a previous thread (which has since been deleted or moved to the secret mods only subforum of hidden threads) some people got quite angry at the fact that this was even being questioned...

 

[dowie]

it was in the news this week ? - MP's report is out.

I meant incidents of spiking.

Interestingly one of the prominent accusers seemed quite happy with this investigation, presumably because they didn't actually address the massive elephant in the room re: the lack of evidence for this even being a real thing, it's been conflated with regular spiking etc.

So what are we concluding then, literally everyone is lying.

No, not necessarily, more likey they genuinely believe what they're saying. That doesn't make it true, did any of them claim to witness a person spike them with a needle?

While the needle thing is unlikely to be true, it's worth remembering that:

That's the other thing, even regular spiking (with drugs) is mostly BS, it's generally alcohol, spiking could be someone pouring out too much alcohol into a cocktail or some doucehbag buying a girl a bunch of doubles when she asked for singles etc..

When people try to study spiking (just regular claims of spiking with drugs let alone needle spiking) they don't find the evidence, they find lots of people who have drunk a lot of alcohol.

Needling - evidence suggest not happening
Drink Spiking - evidence proves it happens.

I'd split it down further:

Needling - no evidence, highly implausible
Drink Spiking (with drugs) - evidence shows most claims are incorrect and made by people who simply drank too much, it is plausible though but seemingly very rare
Drink Spiking (with alcohol) - seems to be way more likely to occur than spiking with drugs, claims of having been spiked are still potentially very iffy

 

[dowie]

Skimming through that report I don't see how they can answer that question above what they responded with, there's so many factors that make it hard to get any real facts on the matter.

If any of the investigations had reviewed the CCTV then surely it would be quite apparent, likewise, they'd be able to look at the drinks consumed by the apparent victims too.

I mean ostensibly they're talking about dozens of incidents happening within some constabulary's area, national press attention and politicians getting interested in it. Then you've got some girl claiming it happened, she was at X nightclub and maybe Y and Z bars before hand, you'd think given all the attention on this they'd perhaps have some detectives investigate the CCTV footage.

Anyone who thinks it's possible to inject drugs into somebody's body without being noticed while surrounded by people in a bar or a nightclub, needs their head examined.

Exactly.