Cross-sectional study finds most drug-facilitated sexual assault disclosures in Spain stay informal

A cross-sectional study of young adults in Spain found that most people who had experienced drug-facilitated sexual assault in party settings disclosed the experience to someone, but very few told authorities. Among 583 participants reporting lifetime victimization, 17.5% had not disclosed the assault to anyone, 78.2% had disclosed it only to their close social environment, and 4.3% had disclosed it to authorities.

Researchers administered an anonymous online questionnaire to people aged 18–35 years living in Spain. Of 1,707 people invited, 1,601 completed the survey, a response rate of 93.8%, and 583 reported drug-facilitated sexual assault while partying. Recruitment used quotas for sex, age group and region across Spain’s 17 autonomous communities. The questionnaire drew on the Sexual Experiences Survey–Short Form Victimization and the 2019 Macro-Survey on Violence Against Women, with cognitive testing involving more than 100 participants before fieldwork.

Disclosure was divided into three categories: no disclosure; disclosure only to the close social environment, including friends, relatives, partners, helplines, social media and other informal contacts; and disclosure to authorities, including healthcare or psychological services and police or judicial institutions. Among the 25 participants who disclosed to authorities, 18 told healthcare or psychological services and 11 contacted police or judicial institutions; four reported contacting both types of formal service.

Women had higher odds of any disclosure than men in the fully adjusted model, with an odds ratio of 1.74 and a 95% confidence interval of 1.06–2.87. Women more often disclosed to their close social environment than men, 82.6% versus 71.2%, while men were more likely to disclose to authorities, 5.4% versus 3.7%. The researchers said this pattern may be consistent with gendered norms affecting both whether and where people disclose, although the cross-sectional study cannot establish why the differences occurred.

More invasive assaults, defined as involving unwanted masturbation, oral sex or vaginal or anal penetration, were more likely to reach authorities than less invasive assaults involving only unwanted touching or kissing: 13.5% compared with 2.3%. Disclosure to the close social environment was less common for the more invasive group, 65.4% compared with 81.0%. Assays involving multiple perpetrators were also more often disclosed to authorities, at 14.7% versus 3.2% for those involving one perpetrator. However, the association between multiple perpetrators and disclosure was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for perpetrator strategy.

Perpetrator strategy showed the strongest association with formal disclosure. Only 1.4% of participants whose assault involved opportunistic DFSA with voluntary alcohol consumption disclosed to authorities, compared with 4.1% for opportunistic DFSA involving other drugs and 34.2% for proactive DFSA involving involuntary substance consumption. In the fully adjusted model, proactive DFSA was associated with 38.76 times the odds of disclosure to authorities relative to opportunistic alcohol-related DFSA, although the wide 95% confidence interval of 12.15–123.59 indicated substantial uncertainty. A sensitivity analysis using Firth penalized logistic regression produced a smaller but still statistically significant association, with an odds ratio of 22.29 and a 95% confidence interval of 5.98–83.04.

The authors proposed that several interconnected factors may contribute to the low disclosure observed in opportunistic cases. These include stigma and victim-blaming linked to substance use, the tendency to portray drug-facilitated sexual assault mainly as covert drink spiking, substance-related memory impairment, the absence of visible injuries in some incapacitated victims, and delayed recognition of the experience as sexual violence. These are proposed contributors in a conceptual model rather than mechanisms established by the survey. They also noted that assaults resembling widely recognized stereotypes of sexual violence, such as those involving strangers or multiple perpetrators, may be more readily identified as sexual assault, an association that was not directly tested as a causal pathway.

The authors said prevention campaigns should address both covert substance administration and opportunistic assaults in which perpetrators exploit victims’ voluntary alcohol or drug consumption, without placing responsibility on people who use substances. They also proposed strengthening institutional responses to opportunistic DFSA and improving access to formal, trauma-informed support. Formal disclosure remained uncommon in the study, however, so the researchers cautioned that estimates involving disclosure to authorities should be interpreted cautiously.

Limitations include the cross-sectional design, which precludes causal inference, and retrospective self-report of sensitive experiences, which may be affected by recall and social-desirability bias. Only the most recent assault was assessed, while voluntary participation through an online panel may have introduced self-selection bias. Perpetrator-strategy data were missing for 22.0% of the 583 participants, reducing the final multivariable model to 429 cases, although analyses found no significant relationship between that missingness and disclosure status. The findings therefore describe disclosure patterns and statistical associations in the surveyed population rather than establishing causes or effects.

Subject of Research: Disclosure patterns and reporting barriers for drug-facilitated sexual assault among young adults in Spain

Article Title: Breaking the silence on drug-facilitated sexual assault: disclosure patterns and barriers to reporting among young people in Spain

Article References: Prego-Meleiro, P., Sordo, L., Meira-Pliego, P., Pulido, J., & Montalvo, G. (2026). Breaking the silence on drug-facilitated sexual assault: disclosure patterns and barriers to reporting among young people in Spain. Frontiers in Public Health, 14, Article 1924643. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2026.1924643

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1924643

Keywords: drug-facilitated sexual assault, Spain, young adults, disclosure, formal reporting, nightlife, sexual violence, cross-sectional study, Breaking, silence, drug-facilitated, sexual