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Sunday, July 6, 2025

‘Date-rapes’ on the rise in PoS

by

Sharlene Rampersad
2125 days ago
20190911

Re­ports of women and men be­ing drugged at bars in the Port-of- Spain area with the help of bar­tenders have been on the rise over the past few months.

This ac­cord­ing to the chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mit­tee Against Sex Crimes, Jonathan Bha­gan. In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bha­gan said he has been told that the drugs ke­t­a­mine and flu­ni­trazepam are be­ing used to drug un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims.

Flu­ni­trazepam is a pow­er­ful hyp­not­ic drug that has seda­tive, anx­i­olyt­ic, and skele­tal mus­cle re­lax­ant prop­er­ties. Ke­t­a­mine used at low dos­es can treat pain but mis­used, it can change a per­son’s sense of sight and sound- caus­ing the per­son to have hal­lu­ci­na­tions and feel out of touch with their sur­round­ings.

Bha­gan said that he was told rapists have been ac­cess­ing the drugs through phar­ma­cies with­out pre­scrip­tions.

“We all know that date rape is a com­mon thing for the last 20 years, girls go in­to bars, get­ting drugged, that is a com­mon thing but I’m hear­ing it more fre­quent­ly now that bar­tenders will be paid off to drug some­body,” Bha­gan said.

Bha­gan said the com­mit­tee ex­pects the Sex Of­fend­ers Reg­istry to be brought to the Sen­ate in the com­ing months- a piece of leg­is­la­tion they ad­vo­cat­ed heav­i­ly for.

He ad­vised those who go out drink­ing to be very aware of their drinks when they are out. He said peo­ple should avoid go­ing to bars where they are not fa­mil­iar or com­fort­able with the bar­tenders.

“Date rape is a re­al­i­ty, they use the drugs that are used in surg­eries to knock peo­ple out and women have to be aware of that, watch your drinks, have an ac­count­abil­i­ty part­ner, don’t go out with a man you don’t know well.”

Bha­gan said his calls for women to be more care­ful are not ‘vic­tim-blam­ing’ as he said a rapist is al­ways the one to blame for a rape.

Bha­gan said while this trend should be a con­cern for lo­cals, he does not want to start a pan­ic but with the un­for­tu­nate­ly high rate of crime in T&T, peo­ple need to take charge of their per­son­al safe­ty.


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