Drug-facilitated sexual violence: It’s still traumatic

I like to write posts here hoping that maybe one day the administration would be so kind to read what has been written here. I believe there is a wealth of advice of how they can cease from fucking up and re-traumatizing sexual violence survivors even more. They seem to have a knack of saying and doing all the wrong things. Worst of all, in my experience there has been a resistance to perhaps realizing what they have done is super duper wrong and traumatizing and they have a shit-ton of learning to do.

But that is besides the point. While doing some light reading on PTSD today, I came across a pretty awesome pamphlet on the Department of Justice’s National Criminal Justice Reference Service.  While I have spent countless hours reading about sexual violence and its effects I have always felt that most of the info I have read has concentrated on survivors who were lucid during their attacks.  I think it is important to talk about all sorts of attacks–not just the ones done by a strange guy onto an innocent pale virgin in the alleyway. One of the major things that holds back sexual violence survivors (from fair access to resources, treatment, support, understanding) is lack of awareness. So if one of our lovely people at the Dean of Students don’t know about the more common circumstances surrounding rape, then they’re probably not going to give most of the students that come through their doors the best experience.

So! I just want to put these two things out there:

• Most college rapes are done by someone the victim knows
• A DOJ study showed that almost 3/4th of women raped were under the influence of alcohol. Some studies so as far to say more than 90% of college rapes overall involve alcohol.

Unfortunately the DOJ study only concentrated on women, but I think it is safe to say that the role of alcohol is probably very high in the rape of all genders. This also excludes those under the influence of other recreational drugs, which I’m sure happens as well. Why is this important?

Because RAPE IS TRAUMATIC EVEN IF YOU DON’T REMEMBER IT.

I don’t care if the survivor took 10 body shots that night; they didn’t ask for it and they didn’t deserve it and YES being raped after that is fucking traumatizing. I’m not saying that if you have drunk sex it equals rape. People seem to get really defensive when you talk about the issue of alcohol and sex. However, we have to remember that alcohol is a drug at the end of the day even if it is legal. If the other person drank too much that night and you had to sling them over your shoulder to your bed they cannot consent. Period.

So Tufts, even if that student reported being raped while passed out it’s still a big fucking deal. Don’t think it’s any less serious because the person didn’t have a knife to their throat as the perpetrator threatened to kill them if they screamed. I don’t care if the perpetrator also drank that night and they’re a “good person.” It isn’t a matter of who is and isn’t a “good person.” It’s a matter of SOMEONE DIDN’T CONSENT TO SEXUAL ACTIVITY. People should be held accountable for their actions. Do people get absolved of responsibility because they were wasted when killing somebody? How about when they were driving drunk? “Oh it’s okay that you drove. You were fucked up and you didn’t know what you’re doing.” – NO. We don’t let people be excused for doing other violent crimes under the influence, so why should sexual violence be an exception?

Anyway – back to the DOJ pamphlet on Drug-Facilitated sexual assaults. Since alcohol plays such a huge part in campus sexual assault I think there are a few main points I think should be taken away from it. Here are some paragraphs from the .pdf

How Rape Drugs Affect Reporting Patterns. Victimization surveys consistently indicate very low reporting rates among rape victims. Delayed reports also are common, particularly in acquaintance rapes. The reasons are well documented in the literature. In drug-facilitated rapes, additional factors may account for low and delayed reporting, including the immediate and residual effects of the drugs (the victim may be unconscious for several hours after the assault and may have hangover effects after regaining consciousness); feelings of guilt or self-blame because of prior voluntary ingestion of alcohol and/or drugs; confusion and uncertainty about what happened; and reluctance to make an accusation without personal knowledge or memory of the assault circumstances.

So when Tufts decides to care that survivors are discouraged from reporting, they can look at this as one of the factors that contribute to this. It is actually good to see higher numbers of reported rapes on campus…that means students feel comfortable with coming forward and the school is doing their job in sex education and awareness. It is scary enough to realize you were raped while incapacitated by alcohol, but even more terrifying to report it and sit down with the people who normally punish you if were caught drinking and tell them that your underage/illegal drinking was an integral part to your sexual assault.

How Victims’ Inability to Recall What Happened Affects the System’s Response. Many aspects of a rape investigation are facilitated by a victim’s ability to describe what happened. The victim’s narrative helps guide the medical/evidentiary examination and the police investigation. In addition, it may be an important consideration in prosecutor filing decisions and judgments about credibility. When victims of drug-facilitated rapes cannot give a complete narrative, they often encounter suspicion, disbelief, and/or frustration. Their inability to supply information that could assist the investigation and/or prosecution compounds their sense of helplessness.

While some jerks lawyers won’t take your sexual assault case because you were drugged, it is the school’s responsibility to still respond to a report of sexual assault regardless of the circumstances. It’s bad enough being raped. After taking the HUGE step to speak out about it, encountering suspicion and disbelief is crushing. The rape isn’t less wrong or less violent with the involvement of alcohol.

How People Misjudge and Minimize Victims’ Trauma. Because most victims of drug-facilitated rapes have no memory of the sexual assault, people may mistakenly minimize the trauma they suffered. One victim was told, “You’re lucky you can’t remember, you won’t suffer as much as other victims.” For all rape victims, the loss of control experienced during an assault is profoundly traumatic. In drug-facilitated rapes, the additional deprivation of cognition during the assault, combined with anterograde amnesia afterwards, subjects the victim to an extreme form of powerlessness. (emphasis added)

I think what people have to understand when it comes to rape is that there are all these layers of really crappy things that survivors struggle with. The trauma of rape isn’t just from any pain or injuries. It’s the feeling of having control of your body taken away from you. Your body is supposed to be the only thing you’re supposed to have control over even when everything else is taken away from you. So when that has been done the insensitivity of others who refuse to act and don’t want to take this most personal of violations seriously it is like those people are saying that you don’t matter. That your body, your sense of safety, your comfort level, your trauma is not a big fucking deal. So yeah, it really is important what you say to or do (or  in Tufts’ case: not do) for survivors.

How Drugging Is a Unique Form of Trauma. Many of the difficulties victims face in the aftermath of these assaults are due to the effects of the drugs given by offenders. The surreptitious drugging of a victim is, in and of itself, a cruel and criminal violation of the person. Some victims describe this aspect of the trauma as “mind rape.” The drugging should be recognized as a separate and distinct act of victimization in addition to any other acts of abuse and degradation to which the victim was subjected.

This also can apply to someone continually coercing another to drink. If you want to hook-up with someone, continually pouring alcohol into their cup is not okay. Wouldn’t you feel better that this person enthusiastically jumped into bed with you rather than you carried them there after they puked outside in the bushes? Making the effort to see that being drugged is a separate act of victimization is good to keep in mind. However, I just want to say that I know that not every person who was incapacitated when raped was drugged by another. For example, I have the misfortune of having a tolerance that varies greatly from day to day. What I drink one night and end up okay could make me completely unable to consent another night.

How Being Unable to Forget Compares With Being Unable to Remember. In the aftermath of rape, most victims suffer acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. One of the most disturbing symptoms is their inability to forget what happened…For victims of drug-facilitated rapes, this aspect of the aftermath may be experienced differently. Because they cannot recall what happened during a significant time period, they have to cope with a gap in their memory. They experience the horror, powerlessness, and humiliation of not knowing what was done to them. They can only imagine what happened. One victim said, “I would rather have the nightmare.” (emphasis added)

So here are different types of traumas happening to people who have undergone the “same thing.” It is so frustrating that people make assumptions and expectations of survivors pertaining to when and how they should deal with what happened to them. No two rapes are the same and no two survivors are the same. One will never exactly experience what the other did and I think that is something that needs to be remembered. A student can still be struggling for a year after an attack. There are many facets involved and it isn’t just the insertion of things into places that makes rape bad and scary.

So the point of this very long post is basically just say that drug-facilitated rape is a problem on college campuses. The dynamics of this type of rape are not very well-known and it is important for school administration to know and understand them as to prevent further victimization. If people who are supposed to help the the survivor are well-trained, they can help let the survivor know that their feelings of trauma of an event they don’t remember are perfectly justified.