La Trobe University Bendigo researchers fighting drink spiking

The crime itself is more broad than a perpetrator adding a drug to someone's drink in a nightclub, with researchers preferring the term alcohol and other drug facilitated sexual violence, with research aiming to uncover more about the offence.

Associate Professor Leesa Hooker and Dr Jess Ison are key members of the La Trobe team who received $265,000 crime prevention innovation fund grant earlier this year to tackle the crime in the Bendigo area and across Victoria.

While the research continues, A/Prof Hooker said there should be more of an emphasis on the perpetrator end of the crime than the victim.

"Coverage should not just be what the victim should be doing or shouldn't be doing to prevent it in the future," she said.

"We really have very limited information (about perpetrators), but I think the evidence is pretty clear that sexual assault is most likely the intention but some other motivations are around burglary, hazing, having a joke and leaving your friend too many double shots, thinking it was funny."

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At the end of the project, the researchers say they are keen to develop resources for health services or police or bar staff, as examples, to help them manage the situation and best respond to victim survivors in a more trauma-informed manner. These tools would run counter to a more "victim blaming" emphasis on victim-survivor behaviour.

"Alcohol and other-drug facilitated sexual violence isn't a specific problem to Bendigo although we have episodes and reports here," A/Prof Hooker said.

"It's actually a global problem but anything that we do here, we can adapt to a Victorian context or national."

The researchers are also keen to change the way media covers the crime, moving away from the victim-blaming focus on victim-survivors.

"A lot of the media reporting on the issue tends to focus on a victim, so you rarely, if ever, hear about the perpetrator and that tends to follow a similar narrative where the story will highlight an individual woman who's had a drink spiked," Dr Ison said.

"She's always depicted as being an innocent victim, she's good and has only had one drink herself and then her friends look after her and she gets home safe."

Dr Ison said this is frequently followed by a comment from police about "what women should do to keep themselves safe".

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"The whole way that the narrative is framed is usually around the responsibility of the victim," she said.

"It's an individual case around her rather than looking at this as what is a structural issue and it reinforces the idea that women are meant to look after themselves.

"Therefore, if they're not the ideal victim, then it's that they're at fault.

"And this is kind of pretty classic, what we call rape myths."

A/Prof Hooker and Dr Ison said alcohol and other drug facilitated sexual assault can include crimes committed in the home, as a result of contact through dating apps and the rare but reported incidents of needle spiking.

"We know that most often episodes of sexual assault happen by someone you know, and most often in the home and alcohol is actually the most common drug to be used in sexual assault," A/Prof Hooker said.

"While we are unsure whether we'll be able to capture some of that sort of information and address that type of violence, we want to still have that wide lens to look at everything that comes under that banner.

"Victims usually don't recall what happened, they feel shame and blamed and stupid.

"They often don't get good responses when they do go to the police or the hospital."

These are the situations the La Trobe research is aiming to confront, with the two-year project first developing information from stakeholders around solutions to some of the challenges in fighting this crime.

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"We're trying to engage the community as much as possible in that process," A/Prof Hooker said.

"And then, in December when we're doing our larger workshop in Bendigo with stakeholders to try to talk about some of the results of the surveys, and what we found in our literature review, and to work out some local best solutions to the problem."

Fundamentally, the researchers are looking for solutions that tackle the systemic nature of the problem which Dr Ison explained in the wake of a new initiative from Western Australian police.

"The Western Australian police have a new initiative where they're testing everyone now (who says their drink has been spiked)," Dr Ison said.

"You don't get tested even if your drink has been spiked in Victoria unless the police direct forensic pathology to come and take the test for them because it's really expensive for a range of reasons."

While Dr Ison said this makes things a little easier, because very few victims come forward anyway and "every step of the criminal justice system is very traumatising to victims", it's not actually fixing the systemic problems and the reasons why other victims don't come forward.

Those needing additional support can contact the Sexual Assault Crisis Line (Victoria) on 1800 806 292 or 1800 RESPECT (Australia) on 1800 737 732.

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