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Peterellis.org.nz
Home / Moral Panics / Drug
Rape urban myth Drug-rapes
- Taranaki Hysteria December 2006 |
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Thirteen woman have approached
Rape Crisis centres around the country since a string of drug rape incidents
surfaced in Taranaki over the weekend. In Taranaki, eight women have now
approached Rape Crisis after having been at pubs with friends on either
Thursday, Friday or Saturday night last week in Stratford or New Plymouth. Most have so far avoided going to
police but are being urged to do so. Hawera Rape Crisis managing
director Pam Bassett said it was scary that more possible cases had been
brought to light after recent publicity. She told National Radio the
individuals she had recently dealt with were very confused over what had
happened to them and one incident appeared to be particularly brutal, with
the victim needing medical attention. After speaking to victims, Ms
Bassett said it appeared there could be a range of perpetrators involved. She said as far as she knew only
two of the women had gone to police. "These women have to be
incredibly brave to go through the police process and for two of them to be
doing that is excellent and I commend them on doing that," she said. Detective Senior Sergeant Grant
Coward of New Plymouth police said police were not as informed about the
incidents but urged any alleged victims to come forward. "I can understand why people don't
come forward, but it certainly is concerning if it is going on and we want to
know about it so we can find out who is doing it." Mr Coward said women were possibly
embarrassed about not being able to remember much and therefore leaving
little to go on. "But we will in fact have
something to go on. If they let us know, we can do an investigation." He said drug rape investigations
could be difficult but there were often crime scenes such as bars involved
and police had ways to investigate, including looking at security footage. "Sometimes there is
consistency of offending," he said. Ms Bassett said women out drinking
needed to be particularly vigilant with their drinks and needed to make sure they
could get home or get support at short notice if they started feeling unwell.
National Party police spokesman
Chester Burrows urged women who had gone to Rape Crisis to authorise release
of private information to police because the support service was constrained
by confidentiality requirements. "I believe that drug rape
survivors may hold a key to these types of offences, in that once they feel
safe and supported, they could instruct Rape Crisis and sexual abuse
counsellors to release any information in their individual cases that may
assist the investigation in Taranaki." |
