2016
Aged 18
I was in a bar in with friends and this man started talking to me, I was polite to him and chatted back for a bit but I wasn’t interested. He started being overly flirtatious and really touchy feely. When I think about it I would be horrified now if someone was acting like that but at the time it was quite normalised for men to help themselves, it’s sickening. I was uncomfortable with it and I asked him to stop but he was quite forceful so I left and went to the toilets and when I came out he was there again, so I made the excuse that I needed to find my friends. Several times during that night I saw him lurking around close, but as I was in a group I felt safe and I stayed. I was drunk, but I was not wasted. Then, all of a sudden the night disappears for me. I went from being on the dance floor in walkabout to waking up the next day in my best friend’s bedroom. Thank god for him. He took me home and made sure I was safe. He had to go to work but had left me with taxi money and a note explaining that he thought I was spiked as I just wasn’t with it and that he had never seen me like that before. We were all drinking at the same speed so it hadn’t made sense how I was in comparison to everyone else. Back then we didn’t know as much about spiking as we do now so I didn’t over think it. But when I reflect on it, I know who spiked me and it’s really frightening to think what could have happened if my friend wasn’t there to take me home.