The issue of psychotropic drug monitoring in sexual assault victims

Drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) is a sexual act in which the victim is unable to give or deny consent due unconsciousness caused by intoxication with alcohol and/or psychoactive drugs that have been self-administered (opportunistic DFSA) or surreptitiously administered by the offender (predatory DFSA). . The characteristics of drugs used in DFSA include: being tasteless and odourless and readily soluble in beverages of any type; ability to cause sedation and/or anterograde amnesia; rapidly absorbable after oral administration, and with a most possible rapid clearance from the body (e.g. within 24 h). In DFSA, the victim is unconscious, unable to reject the abuser and unable to clearly remember the circumstances surrounding the intercourse. The consequence is the delay in requiring and carrying out toxicological analysis on the biological matrices of the victim or even the reluctance of the victim to disclose the crime. Moreover, since the so-called “date rape drugs” are often consumed with ethanol and show similar toxicodynamic effects, the diagnosis can be wrongly considered as classical ethanol intoxication.