For N., 23, a self-employed real estate professional, it happened recently. “I arrived for a meeting with a well-known businessman at the tower where he lives,” she recalled. “We met by the building’s pool area. At some point his friend pushed me into the pool. I had to go up to his apartment to dry off, and then I made a mistake and took a sip from the glass he poured for me. After a few minutes, I stopped communicating. I woke up half naked in his bed several hours later. When I asked him what happened, and whether something happened, he answered me, ‘Yes. Don’t you remember? It was fun.’ And I didn’t remember. I just understood. I couldn’t hold myself together. I began to realize what had happened to me, that I had been drugged.”
In recent years, this has been considered a nationwide scourge in Israel. GHB and GBL have gone from deadly anesthetics to party drugs, and one of the most common tools used by rapists. The drug strips the body of the ability to move or resist, and often leaves victims struggling to remember what happened to them. What makes date-rape drugs so attractive to rapists is the fact that the substance does not remain in the blood, lungs or saliva. The only place where traces of the drug remain is in hair follicles. But more than a decade ago, Israel Police decided it no longer needed a laboratory capable of testing hair follicles for traces of date-rape drugs, and the lab was closed.
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'More rapists are recognizing the potential of this substance,' Ofir Shtevi
(Photo: Yair Sagie)
Ofir Shtevi, 29, has been leading a years-long campaign to reopen such a lab. As part of that struggle, she agreed to reveal her identity and share that when she was 22, she met a friend at a bar, went to the restroom and returned. The next thing she remembers is moving between the homes of various strangers, until she eventually found her sister’s house, arriving barefoot in the cold of January.
“The prosecution closed the case,” she said painfully. “If to this day there are zero convictions for the use of date-rape drugs, the system must improve. As time passes, more rapists understand the potential of this substance, which the state is simply ignoring.”
According to Israel Police data, between 2018 and 2023 police seized about 235 liters of date-rape drugs. This is an enormous quantity, enough for roughly 50,000 doses, meaning 50,000 cases of rape.
In the absence of an official lab in Israel, Shtevi’s hair samples were sent for testing at a laboratory in Italy. “I waited months for the test results to return from abroad,” she said. “They explained that Italy was on vacation. But I wasn’t on vacation. I was raped. After eight months the results arrived. The answer was negative. I was shattered, because I knew I had been drugged. I never even saw the results myself. The prosecution closed the case. Only later did I realize they hadn’t tested for that specific substance at all. When the test was done again, it was found in high quantities.”
The Italian lab does not take responsibility for defending its findings in Israeli court. It is a foreign lab, one of only two willing to work with the State of Israel. “Honestly, I understand,” Shtevi said. “Why would an Italian expert come repeatedly to undergo cross-examination in an Israeli courtroom? In a foreign language? Why?”
The test itself is also far from simple. “They take full locks of hair and cut them off,” Shtevi described. “It has to be close to the root, from several points on the scalp, because newly grown hair will no longer contain traces of the drug. That way, an indication is created of when the drug took effect. That is evidence in every sense. You walk around with pain and bald patches for weeks afterward. The trauma appears on your body as well as your face. Everything just to find a bit of peace. But the disappointment only grows.”
‘I understood that I wouldn’t get justice against the attacker, so I’m looking for justice for myself’
The need to reopen such a lab in Israel has also been discussed in petitions to the Supreme Court. The court ordered the establishment of an inter-ministerial team, which concluded, reflecting the Health Ministry’s position, that there was insufficient demand for such a lab in Israel and that tests conducted abroad were preferable.
However, in a different Supreme Court ruling, on appeal after a district court accepted a hair sample as admissible evidence, Justice Yitzhak Amit, now president of the Supreme Court, argued: “There is no need for us to discuss the admissibility and weight of the innovative scientific evidence indicating the presence of a date-rape drug. It is appropriate to decide only whether the evidence is necessary for the process. I suggest that we leave the complex questions concerning innovative scientific findings for another time.”
In practice, the Supreme Court declined to recognize foreign test results as admissible evidence. “I went all the way to the High Court of Justice,” Shtevi said in frustration. “But within all the legal word-washing in the rulings, no one said, ‘Let’s stop. It cannot be that Israel is incapable of testing for drug traces.’”
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“The depth of the disorientation caused by this drug is beyond imagination
(Photo: Israel Police)
N, who hired attorney Roni Aloni-Sadovnik, heard about hair follicle testing and decided not to wait for the Italian lab. She paid about 7,000 shekels for a similar test at a private lab operating in Israel, conducted by a well-known forensic expert who previously served as a senior official in the Israel Police forensic division and ran the lab that was closed.
The court is unlikely to recognize the evidence. But N decided to undergo the test anyway.
“The depth of the disorientation caused by this drug is beyond imagination,” she explained. “Right now, I can’t tell myself, ‘You were drugged, you were raped, it’s proven.’ I need that ability. I understood that I wouldn’t get justice against the attacker, so I’m looking for justice for myself. To know that I’m right, and that I really was raped using a date-rape drug.”
‘The feeling is violating, especially when it involves men’
Not only women fall victim to date-rape drugs. Y., 25, was raped when he was 18. The day after the assault, he got up to attend an elite military selection process. “I received large doses of preventive HIV treatment,” he said. “I vomited throughout the entire selection, between exercises. I knew that if this ruined my chances, it would hurt me even more.” He and his therapist also concluded that he was not emotionally ready to file a complaint at the time. “I completed the training track in the unit, felt strengthened, and only then did I go to file a complaint,” he said.
“Later, the police found in his possession, I assume in the place I directed them to, a bottle with residue of the drug, but it was impossible to determine why or whether it had been used. But if there was drug residue, that means there was more, and that he used it. I later learned that he contracted HIV. My luck was that I was accompanied by a sexual assault crisis center. The feeling is violating, especially when it involves men. In our society, men are not allowed to be raped or harmed, even though it is widespread, especially within the gay community.”
Attorney Aloni-Sadovnik is leading the campaign to establish a medical lab for identifying date-rape drugs. “The Health Ministry and the police are betraying women’s trust by deliberately concealing data on the scope of the date-rape drug epidemic in Israel, and lying to the High Court as if the low number of complaints does not justify the financial investment in a single such lab,” she said. “Just like October 7, when the public realized there was no state to protect us and organized independently, here too we were forced to initiate the establishment of a lab at Sheba Medical Center.”
According to Aloni-Sadovnik, she intends to raise donations to fund the three required machines, at a cost of about $1 million. She is responsible for fundraising, while the hospital will contribute the space, time and human capital.
Israel Police said in response: “Israel Police determined that there is no place for establishing a laboratory in Israel and that no suitable accredited laboratory was found to conduct the tests locally. The issue was also examined by the High Court of Justice, which accepted the state’s position.”
The Health Ministry said: “Currently, responsibility for conducting such tests in criminal cases lies with Israel Police. The decision not to establish a laboratory in Israel was made following comprehensive staff work by an inter-ministerial team. This issue was discussed by the High Court of Justice, which accepted the state’s position and rejected the petition.”
The Judicial Authority declined to comment.