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A ninth woman has approached Rape Crisis in Taranaki saying she has been drug-raped, but only two of the nine have gone to police.
Last week Rape Crisis said eight women had approached them in Taranaki after incidents at pubs in Stratford, New Plymouth and Hawera the previous weekend.
Detective Senior Sergeant Grant Coward of New Plymouth today told NZPA a complaint was being investigated in Hawera.
Safer Centre Taranaki counsellor Lorraine Jans said a woman had approached police in Stratford too.
Ms Jans told NZPA a ninth woman had also contacted Safer Centre, saying she had been the victim of a drug rape.
"We've had lots of rings from around the country as well.
"The thing that's concerning us the most is the number of people, not necessarily in our area, that have come forward that it's happened to them and they've not done anything.
"They've not told anybody, they've not been to the police, they might not even have been to places like us."
Ms Jans believed one of the main reasons might be that the women were confused or could not remember much "but they know they've been raped and it's very difficult to go to the police and talk about it when you actually don't remember anything about it".
Rape counselling organisations encouraged women to go to the police, despite the majority opting not to go.
"But there's general mistrust around the way they'll be treated when they go to the police," she said.
"I guess the whole thing is they give the appearance of having got really drunk."
But Ms Jans said drug rape was nothing to do with getting drunk "but the problem is the effect can be the same".
She could not say if it appeared any of the nine rapes might be linked.
"The information the women can give is so confused and not clear so we just don't know."
Mr Coward told NZPA if the women did not go to the police, there was nothing they could do.
"We haven't got any factual information so there's nothing we can do -- we were hoping that the Safer Centre or Rape Crisis people who were dealing with these women would encourage them to come forward.
"We put a media release hoping that they would come forward. No one has and we're not sure if the problem's there or not."
He could understand women not coming forward or being embarrassed but hoped they would come to police as any information was valuable.
"We will in fact have something to go on. If they let us know, we can do an investigation."
- NZPA
