Citation

Jorge Dinis-Oliveira R, Magalhães T. Toxicol. Mech. Methods 2013; 23(7): 471-478.

Affiliation

Department of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Informa Healthcare)

DOI

10.3109/15376516.2013.796034

PMID

23581559

Abstract

The low rates of reporting, prosecution and conviction that characterize sexual assault, is likely even more evident in drug-facilitated cases. Typically, in these crimes, victims are incapacitated and left unable to resist sexual advances, unconscious, unable to fight off the attacker or to say "no" and unable to clearly remember the circumstances surrounding the events due to anterograde amnesia. The consequence is the delay in performing toxicological analysis aggravated by the reluctance of the victim to report the crime. Moreover since "date rape drugs" are often consumed with ethanol and exhibit similar toxicodynamic effects, the diagnosis is erroneously performed as being classical ethanol intoxication. Therefore, it is imperative to rapidly consider toxicological analysis in drug-facilitated sexual assault. The major focus of this review is to harmonize practical approaches and guidelines to rapidly uncover drug-facilitated sexual assault, namely issues related to when to perform toxicological analysis, toxicological requests, samples to be collected, storage, preservation and transport precautions and xenobiotics or endobiotics to be analyzed.

Language: en