There was a distinct party atmosphere as teenager Millie Taplin celebrated the end of lockdown restrictions with four school friends — and her first ever night on the town.
It was the first time they’d seen each other in months. The first time they could properly celebrate their 18th birthdays together — not to mention the very first time they’d been to a nightclub. Having started with cocktails at a local pub, the five young women made their way on to the dance floor at MooMoo Clubrooms in Southend, Essex, last Saturday.
‘We were having such a great time,’ says Millie, whose actual 18th birthday last November was marked with a quiet family meal at home. ‘Until someone decided to ruin it.’
Indeed, the photos on Millie’s phone record happy images typical of thousands of young adults, for whom the pandemic put all socialising and teenage rites of passage on hold.
Claire (left) was so traumatised she decided to film her daughter’s ordeal — initially intending to show Millie (right) once she’d recovered, as a warning to be more careful in future. But when Millie saw the film she urged her mum to put it on a Crimewatch Facebook group to warn other parents and young people
But it is the last image from Millie’s night out, taken in A&E by her devastated mother Claire, which will haunt parents across the country as their children hit the clubs next weekend to celebrate A-level results.
Torn from her bed at 1.30am by a frantic phone call from one of Millie’s friends, Claire, 48, had raced to Southend Hospital after being told her youngest daughter had collapsed after her drink was spiked.
‘Honestly, I thought I’d walked into a scene from the horror film, The Exorcist. I stood thinking, “Oh my god, what is this? What’s she been given?” ’ says NHS worker Claire, a mother of four. ‘Her hands were clawed, her jaw was clenched and her face so distorted she looked possessed. I’d never seen anything as horrific as this in my life. I didn’t even know what drug could do that.’
Claire was so traumatised she decided to film her daughter’s ordeal — initially intending to show Millie once she’d recovered, as a warning to be more careful in future. But when Millie saw the film she urged her mum to put it on a Crimewatch Facebook group to warn other parents and young people.
The reaction to images from the film, which went viral this week, has been overwhelming for the Taplin family, with many praising their bravery. But mother and daughter have also been stung by some negative responses, with some doubting whether Millie’s drink really was spiked, instead reckoning she was either intoxicated from alcohol or just too scared to admit to her mother a far more likely scenario.
The reaction to images from the film, which went viral this week, has been overwhelming for the Taplin family, with many praising their bravery
For images of Millie’s clawed hands, clenched jaw and facial gurning suggested, according to those in the know, the unpleasant side-effects associated with popular stimulant party drugs such as MDMA and ecstasy.
Usually, sedative ‘date-rape’ drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), which depress the central nervous system, are more commonly linked to drink spiking to render victims incapable of fending off attack. No one knows exactly what Millie might have ingested, as the family say blood tests were not taken on her admission to hospital for reasons that are still unclear to them.
Millie, who is now fully recovered and has just started a new job as a carer, insists: ‘I have never willingly taken any drug. I have never wanted to. So for that to happen was very frightening. If my friends hadn’t looked after me, the outcome could have been very different. When Mum showed me the video of how badly I’d been affected, it was so horrendous I wanted to make sure no other person went through that. I would never have agreed for the video to be made public if I’d knowingly taken any drugs.’
Claire adds: ‘We’ve had a few people make comments to Millie like, “Oh you’re just saying that because you’re too frightened to tell your mum you’ve taken drugs”.
‘It’s laughable. People don’t know my daughter. I know 100 per cent that someone put something in her drink because she’s not the sort of girl to experiment. This was the first time she’d been out. If she’d taken something, she would have told me. I know that’s what every parent thinks, but people can think and say what they like. If [seeing the images] stops one other girl from going through what Millie did, then it will have been worth it. Everyone hears about drink spiking but they never see what it can do.’ So what could have had such a dramatic effect on Millie?
According to her mother, hospital staff ‘thought she might have been given some kind of paralysing drug and then something to knock her out, which hadn’t worked as she was fully aware, though pretty much paralysed’.
It’s a truly frightening thought — and terrible luck that such a thing happened to Millie on her first foray into socialising after lockdown.
As with so many other teenagers, her life had been put on hold during the pandemic. Furloughed from her job as an apprentice hairdresser, she had no social life to speak of.
A week before the girls’ night out, she’d gone through a traumatic break-up with her long-term boyfriend. One friend suggested they go clubbing to cheer her up.
‘We were having such a great time,’ says Millie (right), whose actual 18th birthday last November was marked with a quiet family meal at home. ‘Until someone decided to ruin it’
‘I’d had a horrible week, so I wanted to go out and have some fun — none of us wanted to get drunk out of our heads, just to dance. We’d never been to a club before and didn’t even know if we’d enjoy
