Incidents of needle spiking reported at 2023 Schoolies events

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A new investigation by triple j Hack has revealed incidents of needle spiking at schoolies events last year on the Gold Coast and in Byron Bay. In one instance, an 18-year-old school leaver was celebrating on the Gold Coast when she started to feel strange and remembers not being able to communicate or shut her eyes.

Transcript

00:00Needle spiking is basically injecting somebody with a needle anywhere in the body, usually

00:06containing some sort of illegal substance, and it is done without their consent.

00:11So the first person we spoke to, her name is Sophie Brown.

00:14She was 18 at the time, celebrating schoolies on the Gold Coast last year.

00:18She says it was her third night out, they were just at one of the local venues, they'd

00:22been there for about 20 minutes when she started to feel symptoms.

00:25So her heart started racing, she wasn't able to shut her eyes and she also couldn't communicate

00:30with her friends.

00:31So her friends called the ambulance and she was taken to the hospital, but after waiting

00:35two hours because it was so busy, symptoms started to fade and so she went home.

00:40The reason she believes she was needle spiked is because the next morning she woke up and

00:44she had a bruise on her arm and it was really sore for a few days.

00:48We also spoke to a schoolies facilitator, Nick Pablacos.

00:51It was his sixth year facilitating events for schoolies and basically that means you're

00:56on the ground running these celebrations, making sure everyone's safe.

01:00Now he says within the space of an hour, three individuals came up to him believing they

01:04had been spiked and two of these individuals said that they actually felt a prick in their arm.

01:09So he called the police and said about eight officers arrived to the scene and took control

01:14of the situation.

01:16And thankfully in this incident they were able to remove this patron from the venue

01:21and they were left with the authorities and taken away.

01:25As for my own knowledge on what happened to this individual, I couldn't tell you besides

01:31that it was left with the authorities, but it was dealt with very swiftly and it was

01:36actually really incredible to see everyone working together quite well.

01:40So Gold Coast Health have said that there were two presentations at Emergency Treatment

01:45Centre on the Gold Coast during the schoolies period with concerns of suspected needle spiking.

01:50But both Queensland Police and New South Wales Police have said that this has never been

01:54investigated, needle spiking has never been investigated.

01:57New South Wales Police confirmed a report of drink spiking during schoolies but not

02:02needle spiking.

02:03So there are experts now who are speaking out about this, including Dr Eisen.

02:07She's a senior lecturer at La Trobe University and has focused a lot of her research around

02:13sexual violence prevention and says that this is definitely happening in Australia.

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