Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault
Drugs and Sexual Assault
There are lots of drugs that people use to make a person an easy target for sexual assault. These drugs may produce different effects, but most of them share a few things in common:
They make a victim really "out of it":
These drugs will make you pretty helpless. You might get drowsy and weak, all of your muscles may relax, and you may even pass out completely. You may just be too "out of it" to stop someone from sexually assaulting you. One of these drugs, Ketamine, can even put you in a strong "trance-like" state, in which you'll stay awake, but you'll be almost completely unaware of the people and things going on around you.
They cause memory loss:
Most of these drugs, including alcohol, can wipe out several hours of your memory and make it very difficult for you to remember if you were assaulted. Even if you do remember having sex with someone, your memory may be too fuzzy to remember if you said "yes" or "no", so you may be unsure if you should report it. (Remember, the law says that in some cases you can be "too intoxicated" to consent to sex.)
They are difficult to test for:
Many of the "date-rape" drugs will pass through your body very quickly, and are very difficult to test for. So it's really important to report a sexual assault as soon as possible - the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to find proof of the drugging.
They produce effects similar to alcohol's effects:
If you're slipped one of these "date-rape" drugs, you may just look and act "really drunk". Some of the drugs also may just make you feel really, really drunk. So if you're drinking with friends, they may not realize that anything's wrong with you - in fact, you may not even realize that anything's wrong with you. Some of these drugs also have after-effects that feel just like a hangover (including memory loss), so when you wake up the next day you may not recognize that you were drugged at all.
Last Modified: September 5, 2006
