Hi, my name is Gail and I am a Foster Carer to a wonderful girl who has been with me for two and a half years. She was recently subjected to a brutal assault where she was drugged and repeatedly raped. She has a good recollection of most of what happened but not all.
This happened over two weeks ago and yet the police have only managed to take a statement from her 12 days after the assault. She gave a blurry statement at the time which made very little sense. At the time her body was full of an awful mixture of drugs including methadone, opiates and cocaine and they were the only ones that showed up!!
She gave her statement last Wednesday - she walked into the police station a fairly confident, determined to beat the beast who had hurt her, young lady - she returned a total wreck, unable to focus, sleep or maintain a conversation. Yesterday I had to call the crisis team out to assess her situation and she is now in a mental ward on 24 hour watch.
Has anyone had such awful experiences with the Saphire unit - it seemed to me that they were so busy looking at her previous history of drugs and running away to look at the girl who had been attacked. I would be interested to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. I am really shocked that this kind thing is happening to girls who need help and understanding. I do understand that they have a very unpleasant job and have to ask some exptremely difficult and unpleasant questions but if you had seen the state of her when she left that interview..............
Thanks Gail

Hi Gail
I've sent you a private message.

Hi Gail I dealt with the Saphire team and in my opinion their are incompetent. I actualy reported them to the Police Commisioner. After my drug rape experience the gang who raped me cointinued to harrase me by telephone yet this incompetant bunch did nothing about it. You must give as much love and support to this young girl as possible. Time heals all, I believed that I would never survive my flas backs etc, but I did. She will get stronger every day. Take Care

Hi Linda and thanks for replying. We have been dealing with Sapphire Squad at Barnet/Colindale in North London. My foster daughter had a problem (when she was 14) with drugs and they do not seem to be able to see past that - she has been out of trouble for the past 2 and a half years - she is just 18, attends college and has completely turned her life around (but that is not documented!!).
After giving her video evidence on Wednesday she has gone into a deep trauma - unable to sleep, she is incoherent, cannot finish a sentence, sit still or even 'with it' for most of the time. We had to admit her hospital on Friday night, where she is at the moment. My main worry is that drugs have had a psychological effect on her - have you ever encountered anything like this. She was like this when she first came back but had settled down, told us what had happened and was even going back to college, until she went into the police station. She did have mental issues in the past but had got over those with therapy.
On Sunday - in a moment of coherence - she said that she remembered as she was telling them what happened she starting reliving it and could hear the music and smell the smells she had when this happened to her.
I'm so sorry for your experience too - but very grateful that you have found some comfort with others 'who know' your pain. And thanks too for caring for others who have to endured this kind of barbaric behaviour in this 'civilised' society we live in.
God bless

Thank you so much for your input - yes I am in agreement with you, the Sapphire Team are truly incompetant!
Yesterday, a week after she last spoke to her, the police officer phoned to see how my foster daughter was doing - I told her that we had to hospitalise her in a mental unit. She was very sorry but she actually asked me if I blamed her! Well I didn't take much persuasion to tell her that 'yes, I did blame her actually. The way they have handled this whole situation is so insensitive! They are looking at my foster childs past history and trying to apply it to her today! It is so wrong on so many levels. They were so busy trying not to contaminate their evidence that they completely forgot about the poor kid who had been so severely traumatised by the whole thing she has ended up in an adult mental ward. It's heart breaking.
My heart goes out to you too - I thought that somewhere along the line police had got it right when dealing with victims of rape - obviously I am very, very, wrong.
God bless
Gail