Last update - 00:00 30/08/2007
Police find no proof of date-rape drug among hundreds of complaints
By Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondent
Every few weeks, somewhere in the country, a woman complains to the police that she was raped after being drugged, but remembers little of what happened. Although police immediately suspect a date-rape drug, no traces of such a substance have been found in the blood or urine of dozens of women examined.
The date-rape drug Gammahydroxybutrate (GHB), a dangerous drug with sedative and anesthetic effects, often has been found in the possession of suspected drug dealers. It disperses in six to eight hours.
"If women are raped under the influence of this drug, remember nothing when they wake up and no traces of it are found in their blood - then we're dealing with the perfect rape," says a senior police officer.
In some cases, police believe the women were drunk, or drunk and high.
"It's not that I don't believe them, but it's embarrassing for them to admit they drank alcohol and took drugs and lost control," an officer says.
Dr. Shlomo Almog, head of the toxicology laboratory at the Sheba Medical Center, the only place that conducts tests to trace the date-rape drug, says that so far, they have found no proof of its existence. The police and hospitals send urine and blood samples to the laboratory, which sends the results to the police.
The police began conducting these tests about a year ago, due to pressure to trace the date-rape drug, Almog says.
"We developed a special method to find traces of GHB and other substances, but even after dozens of tests, we couldn't find any. In most cases we found very large amounts of alcohol, but no indication that the alleged rapes were carried out with drugs. I'll admit that a date-rape drug exists in Israel only when I see it in someone's blood," he says.
"It's very likely that by the time the rape victim awakens, understands what happened to her and goes to the police or hospital, the critical six to eight hours have elapsed and there's no chance of tracing the drug," he says.
The police need to take blood and urine samples right away when they suspect a rape-date drug, he says.
But even in one rare case, when the police sent the victim to be examined shortly after the rape, no traces of GHB were found in her blood. A few months ago in the Sharon region, a young woman went to a party and drank with a man she met. Eventually he took her to an adjacent yard and began to rape her.
The young woman said she remembered nothing and was hazy and disoriented, but shouted and fought with the man, thus waking up a neighbor who called the police. "We thought this case would set us on the right path, but the examination failed to find a date-rape drug," Gelilot police commander Yitzhak Getenyo said.
Getenyo believes most complainants. "Many girls come to us and say they woke up without knowing what happened. They speak of a 'black hole' and disorientation. These are not false complaints, and I believe them when they say they don't know what happened. But I can't prove what caused this 'black hole.' They have no signs of violence on them, because if they were drugged they didn't resist. My gut feeling tells me there's something here, but there's no proof."
One woman told the police a few weeks ago that she thought she had been raped after being drugged with GHB, but said, "I don't know if I agreed to sleep with him or not."