Doctors ask ‘spiked’ girls: Haven’t you just had too much drink?
TWO students who claim they were spiked with needles in a nightclub were outraged after doctors suggested they simply ‘had too much to drink’.
Elle Vickers, 18, and Ellen Baldwin, 19, said they ‘blacked out’ after being injected with an unknown drug on a night out.
The friends found suspicious pin-prick marks on their skin.
Miss Baldwin said she was taken from the club to A&E at Royal Stoke University Hospital on Friday night but discharged within 30 minutes.
Miss Vickers returned home but sought medical help after waking up covered in bruises and scratches with a puncture mark on her thigh.
Miss Baldwin went back to hospital with her friend on Saturday, but the pair said they were told to see their GPs instead for blood tests. She said: ‘We felt it was impossible to get help and were just being pushed through the system to be told: “Are you sure you didn’t just have a couple too many drinks?”.’
She said the pair – both students at Keele University in Staffordshire – went with friends to the Fiction club in Stoke. She added: ‘From what I’ve been told I collapsed outside the nightclub.
‘When we got to A&E I couldn’t even hold myself upright. Within half an hour of being there, I was discharged and told to come back sober.’
Miss Vickers, from Cheadle, Greater Manchester, said: ‘After being alone all night, waking up with injuries in intimate areas and unable to recall huge amounts of the night, I just want to be checked over and given the all-clear.’
Police are investigating the incident. A spokesman said early on Saturday officers ‘assisted a 19-year-old woman to present at hospital after she reported vulnerability following attending a nightclub. She is being supported by speciallytrained officers’.
Fiction said: ‘While there have been no proven cases of injection spiking [at the club]...we take all reports of this nature very seriously. Our teams are fully-trained on the issue.’
Dr Matthew Lewis, of the trust which runs the hospital, said the public should only come to A&E ‘for serious, life-threatening conditions’. However, he said patient concerns were taken ‘seriously’ and issues should be raised with a specialist advice and liaison team.
Police chiefs last month revealed forces had received 1,382 reports of drug spiking using needles since September 2021. However, some security experts have cast doubt on the claims.