Several people dance in a nightclub in London. Alberto Pezzali (AP)
The United Kingdom is one of the first countries in which a wave of punctures to women in nightlife was detected.
It was last fall.
Now, on the other hand, the prevalence of this mysterious phenomenon in Spain contrasts with the virtual disappearance of the British news for months.
The initial alarms went off in October, when the peak that coincided with the start of the university course and the reopening of the premises after the restrictions of the pandemic took place.
According to the National Council of Police Chiefs (NPCC), only in the last quarter of 2021, 1,032 cases of punctures were recorded, the majority that October.
The wave of punctures led the Government, months later,
Dimensioning the phenomenon with concrete figures is difficult.
According to the police authorities themselves, the data is questionable, given the difficulty of collecting reliable numbers.
But the growing volume of women who last autumn began to report, in different parts of the British geography, experiences that had in common memory gaps, the sensation of a scrape and marks on the skin
It was enough for the Minister of the Interior to ask the police forces, in that same month of October, for a diagnosis of the situation and the volume of potential victims.
Those who suffered these punctures reported the great vulnerability they felt when attacked and the fear of an unknown phenomenon and the effects of the puncture itself.
The police did find toxic substances, but did not specify which ones.
The researchers did not detect an increase in sexual abuse or assault in the months in which the wave of needle sticks occurred.
In the United Kingdom the alarms went off those months.
Parliament promoted a detailed analysis in December.
In April of this year, and within the Home Affairs Committee, the British Parliament published the first report that measures what happened, after collecting the testimony of 1,895 people who shared their particular experiences.
All of them were victims of what is known in English as
spiking,
which refers both to the discharge of substances without consent in a consumption and to these most recent punctures.
The Parliament also had the point of view of another 1,413 people who assured that they had witnessed some of these situations.
After analyzing all these testimonies, 525 episodes of punctures were recorded until the time of publication of the report.
Of these, almost all (499) were in 2021.
In its study, in which it also cited the figures from the NPCC, the British Parliament warned that the spaces especially exposed to the practice of punctures were not limited to entertainment venues, and also warned of other highly vulnerable areas, such as music festivals.
In the same document,
It went on to suggest that safety training for workers should be a mandatory requirement for licensing.
The police, however, recognize the precariousness of the data and, in their appearance at the Interior Commission during the work for the preparation of the report, recounted the difficulty of drawing a reliable portrait of a reality that seems
more widespread than official figures suggest.
According to a survey by the demographic firm YouGov, one of the largest in the country, conducted among 2,000 people, 11% of women and 6% of men confessed to having suffered some type of intoxication, either in their drink, or by a puncture;
and if, in addition to those who were victims, you add those who know someone who was, the figure rises to a third of them and a fifth of them.
Despite the data discrepancy, the Parliament document admits, in any case, that in the face of a "new phenomenon" such as punctures, "nobody knows how prevalent it is, or what leads the perpetrators to do it."
The same situation that occurs in Spain.
Both in one country and another, the punctures have mainly involved women and fundamentally
(93%) took place at night, in a leisure space.
Protests in 30 cities
In the British wave, in addition, enclaves arose where the proliferation of these punctures was greater.
The English city of Nottingham became one of the hotspots when, in the first half of October, the police became aware of 15 cases in a short period of time, which led to up to three arrests of young people under 20 years of age.
The prevalence led Nottingham to become one of the spurs of the
Girls Night In
protest campaign , which led thousands of young women from up to 30 cities in the United Kingdom to boycott the entertainment industry. for one night, usually on Wednesdays, especially popular with college kids.
In addition, also in October of last year, more than 100,000 signatures signed a petition that demanded mandatory searches in entertainment venues to detect material that could be used against women.
And although in recent months there has been no increase in cases, nor has the phenomenon been in the forefront, as in Spain, the objective of the platforms set up in the autumn is still alive and calls for tangible changes to make nightclubs a place safer.
Among the fundamental proposals is to guarantee that the personnel working in these premises have the necessary training to identify when someone has suffered a puncture, as well as the promotion of information initiatives.
In order to report one of these attacks, it is necessary for the victims to know what the possible effects of the attack are.
spike.
This May, the Government ordered all the country's universities to implement specific actions before the end of the year to prevent the phenomenon.
To do this, the Ministries of the Interior and Education created a working group that includes police, activists, managers from the universities themselves and victims, and whose task is to come up with plans to provide students with practical steps to stay safe.
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