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Thirteen woman have approached Rape Crisis centres around the country since a string of drug rape incidents surfaced in Taranaki over the weekend.
In Taranaki, eight women have now approached Rape Crisis after having been at pubs with friends on either Thursday, Friday or Saturday night last week
in Stratford or New Plymouth.
Most have so far avoided going to police but are being urged to do so.
Hawera Rape Crisis managing director Pam Bassett said it was scary that more possible cases had been brought to light after recent publicity.
She told National Radio the individuals she had recently dealt with were very confused over what had happened to them and one incident appeared to be particularly brutal, with the victim needing medical attention.
After speaking to victims, Ms Bassett said it appeared there could be a range of perpetrators involved.
She said as far as she knew only two of the women had gone to police.
"These women have to be incredibly brave to go through the police process and for two of them to be doing that is excellent and I commend them on doing that," she said.
Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Coward of New Plymouth police said police were not as informed about the incidents but urged any alleged victims to come forward.
"I can understand why people don't come forward, but it certainly is concerning if it is going on and we want to know about it so we can find out who is doing it."
Mr Coward said women were possibly embarrassed about not being able to remember much and therefore leaving little to go on.
"But we will in fact have something to go on. If they let us know, we can do an investigation."
He said drug rape investigations could be difficult but there were often crime scenes such as bars involved and police had ways to investigate, including looking at security footage.
"Sometimes there is consistency of offending," he said.
Ms Bassett said women out drinking needed to be particularly vigilant with their drinks and needed to make sure they could get home or get support at short notice if they started feeling unwell.
National Party police spokesman Chester Burrows urged women who had gone to Rape Crisis to authorise release of private information to police because the support service was constrained by confidentiality requirements.
"I believe that drug rape survivors may hold a key to these types of offences, in that once they feel safe and supported, they could instruct Rape Crisis and sexual abuse counsellors to release any information in their individual cases that may assist the investigation in Taranaki."
- NZPA
