A DERRY-based doctor who assaulted police after a Christmas party has said she doesn’t remember a thing because her drink was spiked with a date rape drug.
Dr Eireann Kerr said she was the victim of a crime – and doesn’t understand why she was charged.
She was convicted on Wednesday of assaulting police but says she doesn’t remember it – and was horrified when she saw what happened on CCTV at Strand Road police station.
A judge accepted she was drugged – but said it was not a defence in law. She was given a two-month conditional discharge for disorderly behaviour and resisting a police officer in December 2013.
The 32-year-old said her memory is a complete blank; she lost her possessions on the night, was left without underwear and says she’s grateful that the man who drugged her ‘never went any further’.
“It wasn’t the result of alcohol, which is what the prosecution had tried to say – that this was an alcohol-fuelled rage attack on police – and that’s not what happened,” the doctor told BBC Newsline.
“And I’m glad that the judge, who said he felt very moved by what I had said in court, was able to say that publicly.”
She was working as an anaesthetist at Altnagelvin Hospital at the time of the incident and had been to several pubs in the city while on a staff night out.
She was arrested during the earlier hours of the morning and assaulted officers in Strand Road police station.
The doctor described how she woke up in a police cell the next day with none of her belongings and no idea how she had ended up there.
Kerr added that she had seen CCTV footage of the attack for the first time when she appeared in court on Wednesday.
“I was horrified and scared, and I still couldn’t remember it. Nothing came back to me, which is really scary, but I know that they [the police] were trying to help me,” she told the BBC.
“There is no doubt, I have complete faith in the police as a whole and I know that they were trying to help me but I must have thought I was being attacked. I didn’t understand where I was. I was in an acute confusional state,” she said.
“I have worked in A&E departments and I work with people who are acutely confused and intoxicated and disorientated from sickness and psychiatric illness. I understand that some of the things they do at that time are not them and are not their character.
“And I understand that the drug that was given to me completely changes your personality. It makes you aggressive, it can make you completely disinhibited. It gives you amnesia and that’s why it is used as a date rape drug. It makes you dulled in your senses and your orientation and that’s exactly how I was on that night.”
Kerr’s defence team submitted toxicology reports in a bid to have the case against her thrown out.
However, the prosecution said she knew exactly what she was doing and had referred to police officers as “peasants”.
Kerr told the BBC that she cried in court with relief when the judge said he accepted her claim that her drink had been drugged without her knowledge.
“I can only say that I’m really, really lucky that whoever tried to spike my drink didn’t actually get the chance to go any further and that’s the only solace that I can take out of it.”
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