SPIKING DRINKS: Teenager has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years.

Rapist who spiked teenage victim before attacking her in flat jailed as new legislation comes before Parliament

By Bill Heaney

A man who drugged and raped a 17-year-old after luring her to a flat just months after sexually assaulting another teenager has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years.

Hisham Awad attacked the second victim after inviting her to a non-existent party at his flat and telling her that others, including a mutual friend, would be there in January last year.

But once she arrived at the 30-year-old’s flat, he was there alone.

Awad gave her a cup of juice which he had spiked with MDMA and methylone before using scissors to cut off her clothes and subjecting her to a horrific attack while she was under the influence of the drugs.

A judge said that after the victim was given a drink laced with drugs she had the presence of mind to go to the bathroom and text her boyfriend with a plea to contact the police.

Lord Boyd of Duncansby said: “Unfortunately she succumbed to the stupefying effect of the drugs before the police arrived.”

In another court case, a man sexually assaulted a student in a dark lane after a night out with her classmates.

Lamin Jadama, 26, pounced on the then 23-year-old in Glasgow city centre on June 22, 2018. Jadama preyed on the student who was stranded having lost her handbag and mobile phone. He offered no help to the now 27-year-old and led her to a nearby lane where he attacked her.

Jadama had denied sexually assaulting the woman at a trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court.  He also faced two separate charges of failing to appear at court and was found guilty of all three by the jury.

The woman had been in Sauchiehall Street celebrating getting her degree with her friends.

The victim failed to flag down a taxi at the end of the night after losing her handbag which included her phone and insulin pen. Jadama then approached her near The Garage nightclub.

She said in evidence: “He offered to help my situation and then we started walking up the street from the taxi rank towards the lane.”

The pair stopped at a fence on nearby Elmbank Street. Jadama asked her to go back to his house, have food and phone her mum.

She added: “He kept pushing me further back towards the fence and that’s when he started groping me over my clothing. I was panicked and checked for anyone else in the area.”

She said he pushed her against a fence and started to touch her.

Prosecutor Hannah Sweeney asked if she wanted this to happen to her and she replied: “Absolutely not, I vocally made quite clear I didn’t want it to happen. I was saying no.”

She stated that by saying no it felt like it made him try “extra hard” to get her to go back to his flat.

Meanwhile, a Bill is passing through the Westminster parliament in relations drinks spiking.

A Bill is processed to create an offence of administering or attempting to administer drugs or alcohol to a person without their consent; and for connected purposes.

Tory MP Richard Graham told MPs: “Spiking, is both an old and a new issue, and one that causes considerable anxiety among the young, particularly teenagers, and their parents.

“Although drinks have been spiked for a long time, and chemicals were first used to poison and kill a soviet dissident in this country almost 50 years ago, the term “spiking” is relatively new, and spiking drinks happens much more frequently than it did.

“The phenomenon of spiking by injection at social events is both new and still mysterious. More could be done by Government. Our aim in this House is, as always, to protect our young and reassure the public.

“We can also send a clear message to those who think that spiking is fun. It is not. Spiking has a deeply unpleasant impact on many lives, and it is a crime that should be punishable in its own right.

“Spiking is not a far-away country of which we know little. It is happening all around us, and even to us.

“One colleague’s daughter was spiked twice in a nightclub. On both occasions, she collapsed and was carried outside by a bouncer and dumped unceremoniously on the pavement.

“Such incidents highlight both the grisly experience for a young woman and the frustrated feelings of her mother.

“We can all relate to that, too, because where neither colleagues nor anyone in our or their immediate families have been spiked, our mailboxes tell us that our constituents have been.

One colleague said: “I know from my inbox that people of all ages and areas will be very pleased that this is being highlighted as it’s awful, can be embarrassing and is often very grim”.

“She speaks for us all, as does another colleague, who wrote that ‘“speaking to police they find that most cases are young women with an unexpected response to drinks…I really worry about the fear that our young live under, and wonder whether this is another type of control of women.”

He added: “This not just about young women, although what data we have does suggest that in the vast majority of cases those affected are females.

“The worst spiking offender of all so far is Reynhard Sinaga—I am sorry to say, an Indonesian national—who was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years for using spiked drinks to sexually assault at least 48 males, many of whom did not know they had been assaulted until Mr Sinaga’s videos were discovered by the police.

“That confirms that there are male victims, and that there may be many more serious incidents, both on men and women, that we do not know about.

“Colleagues from five parties are supporting my Bill today, and I hope the whole House will share my view that this is not a party political but an all-party and all-country issue on which reaching broad consensus inside and outside Parliament is the key to future success.

“We know already that there have been about 2,600 reported cases over the last five years and we suspect that that is the visible part of the iceberg, which means there is work to be done.

“Spiking itself is not a specific crime, no one can be arrested simply for the act of spiking itself, nor is there enough data on spiking for adequate analysis and response, and at the moment it is not mandatory for hospitals automatically to report suspected spiking incidents to the police. I suspect all of us, would like that to change.

“That is the context, those are the experiences and that is the gap in the law, which I think will surprise many of our constituents, and that is the main reason for making spiking a crime.

“There is not a specific criminal offence. If a drink is spiked or if an injection takes place, it is rolled into a different criminal offence.

“We need something more. There is a conundrum about spiking to highlight. Spiking by injection is a relatively new phenomenon, but anecdotally, it is growing.

“My constituent Maisy Farmer—I hope I will not do long-term damage to her reputation by describing her as a very sensible university student of criminology and policing—was behaving manically and completely out of character when recently returning home with friends from a nightclub, and the next morning she found a needle mark on her arm that she suspected was evidence of having been spiked.

“Her mother, Rosie, contacted her surgery, but was told it was too late for tests. Maisy was signposted to sexual health services, which took some tests, and she received preventive inoculation against hepatitis B and HIV.

“The police, in turn, were very supportive, but without evidence of any substance in Maisy’s body or any known secondary offence, they could not do more. The point is that all these services reacted as they could and should, but if, as seems likely, spiking by needle had taken place, that is wrong and something must be done. The emotional stress alone is considerable. The question is what should be done.

“If there is no evidence of a needle or substance and nothing on CCTV to follow up, it is difficult to know exactly what is happening. However, that does not mean that nothing can be done—in fact, the opposite. Some of this is best done at a local level. The police and crime commissioner’s recent successful safer streets fund award has partly been used to provide testing kits in nightclubs, which can be used by victims and others.

“I should mention that a drug often used in drink spiking, GHB, has been reclassified by the Government as a class B drug, meaning possession can result in a maximum five-year sentence. We need all the possible light that we can shine, especially on spiking by needles.

“Spiking is already a considerable issue and is getting worse. Spiking by injection needs more research and investigation. We could send a clear message today in support of the work of all local authorities and answer student groups from St Andrews to Truro, MPs from across the country, ‘Love Island’ contestants and parents everywhere that we want to enlist in a more open partnership with communities by saying that we care and that we will do more.”