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TODAY • 11:24 am
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Accusations on high school graduation trip: Experts explain the effect of knockout drops.
With no memory of the evening to wake up, the dull feeling of being wrapped in cotton wool, the last sip of the drink and then the film tore. These are Symptoms resulting from knockout drops can point out, experts give an insight into the emotional world of the victims. Allegations of abuse using Ko-Drops on the high school graduation trip in Croatia brought the topic to the fore. But are knockout drops a real problem – or does the drop story often have to serve up with excessive alcohol?
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“In many KO-means cases there is no evidence of the substance,” explains Wolfgang Bicker, Head of the Forensic Toxicological Institute in Vienna. “If you don’t know an affected person and don’t know how they react to alcohol, there are no sure co-medication symptoms. The film can also be torn from alcohol. But when people know each other and moderate alcohol is drunk and the state of affairs suddenly changes in the sense of slurred speech and inadequate behavior – from completely over-excited to towards sedation, these are safe indications. “
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From sexually disinhibiting to numbing
The Forensic-Toxicological Institute in Vienna investigates ongoing cases: “Not every day, but it is present all year round,” explains Bicker. There is not only one co-means, but over 100 substances: “Any substance that can be misused as a co-agent works on the central nervous system and can trigger very different things there. “
Liquid Ecstasy (GHB) is one of these remedies: “With low doses, it is more likely to be stimulating, socially open, you become talkative and sexually disinhibited. In higher doses it can lead to a state of sleep. ”In all cases of knockout drops, the respective substance decides on the memory: “If you know from the perpetrator’s point of view which substance works how, primarily those are used that impair memory.”
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The later reconstruction of an advertisement is all the more difficult. According to crime statistics, the number of reports of narcotics-related offenses (including knockout drops) has more than doubled since 2013 with more than 106 cases in 2020 in Austria. The main facts were 2020 36 robberies and 68 rapes. Sexual coercion was also reported twice. In the Steiermark were in 2020 five rapes and seven robberies under anesthesia displayed. In Carinthia it was a robbery and three rapes.
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KO drops only detectable for a short time
Experts assume that the number of unreported cases is unreported: “When victims have a film tear and don’t know what happened and they have no one to point to, the threshold is greater to go anywhere and express suspicions,” explains Ewa Müller, Specialist in pediatrics at the Graz Children’s Clinic, where “a few cases” end up with knockout drops every year. “The main problem is that the drops are only detectable for a relatively short time in blood and urine,” says Müller.
“Liquid Ecstasy comes with one Detection window of six hours in the blood and 12 hours in the urine is the most problematic, ”explains Bicker.
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Other substances from the field of sleeping pills and tranquilizers can sometimes be detected for up to three days.
“Women often wake up after sex crimes in someone else’s apartment and don’t go to the police five minutes later,” says Bicker. Victims are often too accompanied by a feeling of shame“Although the victim is of course not responsible, it is always the culprit’s fault,” adds Müller.
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