One Night in Nottingham
Words/ Lou Andrews, Anonymous
TRIGGER WARNING – This article contains discussion surrounding spiking and assault
In October 2021 there was a flurry of spiking incidents in and around the Nottingham area.
It was a tale that sent the socials into a frenzy and quite rightly so. More worryingly, it seemed that needles were now the weapon of choice. A group of young university students decided to take some action. A friend of theirs had been spiked in one of the local clubs (suspected needle incident), which hammered the whole thing home and enough was enough.
I caught up with one of the girls, who has asked to remain anonymous to protect herself from trolling! (that’s right – there are people out there trolling those that are trying to do some good in this world!) Before I began the interview, I was sent the link to the episode of 24 hours in A&E that their friend, Kate, had ended up on and also a link to their social media page, Girls Night In Nottingham – sadly this page now lies dormant due to the pressures of negativity.
At the beginning of the 24 hours in A&E episode we see Kate in a comatose state. She’s not reacting to anything, she’s simply not able to. A motionless pawn in this very real and dangerous game. Luckily, the nurses are able to work their magic and Kate does begin to respond. It’s at this point that we hear one of the nurses comment that there had been ‘a few others’ that had been admitted that night, others who had been to the same places as Kate and had been injected...wait, hold on...what? A few others?! It’s clear this is not an isolated incident and it’s not an opportunist’s game either. These are calculated, planned attacks and it chills me to the bone. If I haven’t scared you off, then please read on...
Tell me about how the whole Girls Night In thing began?
A friend and I were in the library at uni and rumours had been going around that all these spiking things were going on. Then a friend of ours got spiked, and we sort of went, “Oh, like this is kind of real now, we need to do something about it”. There were 12 of us all together and we set up social media pages and then from there, we just got flooded with stories – some of which you couldn’t even make up. It was so, so scary and you almost don’t want to believe it because it’s that scary.
So, what happened to your friend? Did she get injected and what with?
Thats the problem, she can’t remember. Some of these injections, you may not even feel it. It’s a pin prick. It would be like a tiny freckle on my arm. You would have no idea. And I think that’s the scariest bit with needles, it’s not even like you could cover your hand over your drink to protect yourself! And of course, with needles there are other risks.
...we just got flooded with stories – some of which you couldn’t even make up. It was so, so scary and you almost don’t want to believe it because it’s that scary.
Tell me about how you managed to get the message out there, I mean, did it start off just posting on social pages?
Yeah, we created an Instagram account and some other girls had set up a petition for government (to make it a law that nightclubs must search guests on arrival) and so we were basically trying to promote that to say, “please sign it”.
What we wanted to do was make everyone aware of what was happening. What we did manage to do was to get the government talking about it. It was on BBC News and CNN wanted to interview us. Our Instagram account went up to 12k followers. The stories kept on coming in with other girls saying this had happened to them! It was just constant, so we decided to set up a boycott of all the nightclubs in Northampton on 27th October (Girl’s Night In), which then spread to other uni’s in the UK doing the same and it worked.
...the bars would say, “well we’re gonna sue you for saying this, because it’s bad press”
That’s pretty awesome that you guys did that, and that people got behind you and supported it, but I know you had some issues and got trolled, which is why you’ve asked to be anonymous. Can you tell me about that?
Yeah. Some people spoke about us not being diverse or inclusive enough. The other issue we had was that we would call out people, you know, we would say “this has happened in this bar” and suddenly, the bars would say, “well, we’re gonna sue you for saying this, because it’s bad press”. It’s just, people try and break you down and at the end of the day, we were not experts in the field or journalists, we were young and were just trying to help. If we had shown what we looked like, there would have been focus on that rather than the actual issue and that’s not the point here. The point is getting those fixes in place, whether, you know, certain people don’t agree, it’s just a difference of opinion and we can build on those fixes.
What I want to know is how did this sort of thing impact you your frame of mind? Because I’ve got to admit reading some of these things (and you’ve read a lot more than I have) really freaked me out?
It really scared me, you know, my younger sister’s 18. She’s going off to uni and it scares me that she hasn’t got that experience of knowing to avoid doing certain things. Over time you just sort of become conditioned to doing certain things to protect yourself. I was definitely more watchful and protective over my friends and what they were doing when we were out.
Yeah, I get what you are saying about being conditioned. It’s become normal programmed behaviour for a girl to have to think about the safest way to get home at night or if they should take a friend out walking with them if its dark.
Totally. So recently I went to, do you know, Mika (Grace Kelly)? I didn’t realise he was such a gay icon; I had no idea. It was also pride month and it was great. I loved that concert, because I wasn’t being groped and I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t targeted. It’s become so normal!
But it shouldn’t be, should it?
No, it never, ever should be.
So, there you have it. Doing this article certainly opened my eyes. One of the things I realised is that we seem to get so far with an issue and doing something about it and then we just down tools. It was like a shovel through the ground, but then it seems we stopped digging. And I get that, I do. As humans we are built that way. Our minds will assess the situation and if it’s not an immediate threat, it gets parked to allow us to focus on what’s going on around us. However, while it may not be an imminent threat, it IS one that impacts us all and let’s face it, it’s a real game of Russian roulette in the respect that you just don’t know who will be next.
It’s like swimming in the sea and someone in the neighbouring beach has been attacked by a shark. The shark is not on our shore, so we keep swimming…but how long before that shark crosses over into what was once our safe haven?
One thing is for sure and that is that this issue is not going away and girls like the ‘Girl’s Night In’ team need to be encouraged, not torn down like some ageing poster and thrown out with yesterdays trash. You only need to look at that social page to see they were actually making a difference and society, it seems, scared them away. What chance do we have? We need more of them! If we are going to make a difference then we need to stand together, work together, fight together, because ultimately this war is far from over.
Lou x