A story that's far too common

The story I’m about to tell is not easy to talk about. I’m sharing my experience, along with my name and photo, to put a face and a voice to a problem that too often goes unnoticed. I don’t want other women to go through this.

My story starts here in Bloomington, in the early hours of Saturday, Nov. 7. It was just after midnight and a girlfriend had just dropped me off at home after we danced at a bar. I’d consumed four or five drinks, but had stopped drinking a couple hours earlier. I was headed up the stairs to my apartment when I saw my neighbor standing in the hallway.

“What’re you up to?” I asked him.

“We’re hanging out over here if you want to come join.”

“Sure.”

I had hung out with this guy and his two roommates before, and though I didn’t know them particularly well, I’d never had a problem with any of them. They seemed like nice guys.

“Do you want anything to drink?” one asked when I walked into their apartment.

“No, but can I get a glass of water?”

“Help yourself.”

I poured myself a glass of water and sat on a sofa chair in the living room. A friend of my neighbors, a man I’d never met, was visiting. He sat down on the arm of the chair, and we introduced ourselves. I expected him to return to talking with my neighbors, but instead he lingered.

“Can I be your boyfriend?” he asked, leaning close.

“What?” I said.

“Am I your boyfriend?”

“No.” I laughed nervously. I had never been hit on in such a creepy way, and I wondered how much he had been drinking. Bottles of liquor were scattered across the coffee table.

Despite the strangeness of the moment, I stayed for another hour or so, talking with my neighbors and doing my best to ignore their friend. Two of us stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. When we went back to the living room, I took another sip of my water. I noticed it tasted slightly salty but didn’t worry about it. In an apartment of three men, I told myself, the dishes must not get very clean.

One of them waved a bong in the air. “Do you want to smoke?” he asked.

I took a hit and passed the bong.

“Man, I wish I could smoke,” said their friend, still hovering near me.

“Yeah,” said one of the other guys, “too bad you’re on parole.”

I looked at their friend, wondering exactly what that meant. “Why are you on parole?” I asked.

The room fell silent.

“Rape,” one of my neighbors blurted out, answering for their friend.

“Man, what the fuck?” said the friend.

The neighbor laughed. “I’m just kidding.”

“No,” yelled the friend. “That’s not cool. This girl is going to think I raped someone now.”

My neighbor told him to calm down. But their friend just got madder. An already uncomfortable situation had suddenly become frightening. I had to leave.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I think I’m going to head home.”

As I shut their apartment door behind me, the last thing I heard was the sound of laughter.

I think I was roofied

I was lucky that I left when I did. After I returned to my apartment, I suddenly felt extremely sick to my stomach and rushed to the bathroom and vomited repeatedly.

For a moment I thought I had fallen ill from drinking. When I realized I had not consumed alcohol for hours, I wondered if one of the men had slipped me acid.

By now it was a little after 2 a.m. As I continued throwing up, I began to fade in and out of consciousness. I felt as if I was caught in the undertow of a wave, trapped and unable to breathe. My thoughts became incoherent. I began to hear voices and see things. Though I am not a religious person, for some reason I could not stop thinking about God. As I leaned over the toilet, I looked into the water and imagined the dark shadow of a face looking back at me. I was certain it was Jesus.

My spurts of rational thinking became so few and far between that I was no longer sure where I was or what I was doing. Nothing looked familiar. My vision was severely blurred. Waves of confusion ran through me like static on a television screen.

As I felt myself blacking out again, I sobbed. I felt like a failure. Here you are, I told myself, dying alone on the floor of your shitty bathroom at the age of 21, never having accomplished anything you want with your life.

I moaned for my roommate. “Liz ... Liz ... Liz ...”

When she appeared in the doorway, I was so confused that at first I did not recognize her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

In my mind, I was screaming for her to call 911. But all I could say, over and over again, was “I am not OK.”

Liz helped me to her room and told me to sleep. “I’m afraid I am not going to wake up,” I told her.

“For work tomorrow?” said Liz. “I promise I’ll wake you up.”

“No, forever.”

Drug-facilitated sexual assault

Although I can’t prove the intentions of the creepy man who apparently put something in my water, I know how vulnerable I was.

Unfortunately, experiences like mine are not uncommon.

The Journal of American College Health reports that 20 to 25 percent of college women are raped during their college careers, and 82 percent of students experiencing unwanted sexual intercourse in 2005 were under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

Though alcohol is the most common drug involved in sexual assault, the number of drugs used has grown over the past 15 years. Reports of drug-facilitated sexual assault have steadily increased since date-rape drugs became prevalent in the mid 1990s. The best known of these drugs are Rohypnol — more commonly referred to as “roofies” — and GHB. Both are sedatives that act rapidly to cause passivity, loss of will to resist, relaxation of muscles, nausea and amnesia in victims.

Though these two drugs are most commonly associated with drug-facilitated sexual assault, a Southern Medical Journal article found that at least 20 different drugs have been used in sexual assaults. Many of these drugs, especially prescription drugs like Xanax and hydrocodone, are extremely common on college campuses across the country.

Because it’s difficult to find accurate statistics on sexual assault in general, it’s impossible to know exactly how often roofies and other drugs are used in sexual assaults. Victims rarely report assaults, and even when they do, detection of these drugs is difficult. Because date rape drugs are most commonly distributed at bars or parties and have the same symptoms as alcohol, it usually takes time for victims to realize what has happened. This delays or even prevents reporting of the crime.

“This is one of the most difficult types of sexual assault to prosecute, because usually when the person wakes up or comes to, they don’t have memory of being drugged.

The memory starts to come back in little pieces, and at that time, it’s often too late to do anything about it,” said Kellie Greene, founder and director of Speaking Out About Rape, a Florida-based group that runs national awareness and prevention programs to enhance public understanding of sexual assault.

An article published in 2000 by the U.S. Justice Department explains that the lack of national statistics and empirical data makes it impossible to determine how often drug-facilitated sexual assault occurs. This means evidence and understanding of this crime is primarily anecdotal.

These anecdotes are shocking, but they reveal something experienced by too many women. This is why I’m sharing not only what happened when I was drugged, but also the events that followed.

Bloomington police station

The next morning I woke up extremely groggy. I didn’t remember what had happened the night before, but as time passed it started coming back to me.

“What the hell happened to you?” one of my girlfriends asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I got really sick last night and started hallucinating.”
“Are you sure you weren’t roofied?”

I went online and found stories of people who had been roofied and experienced the same symptoms: vomiting, hallucinations, confusion and loss of consciousness. I decided to go to the Bloomington police.

Because I was still confused and shaken up, two friends — another girl and her boyfriend — drove me to the limestone station on Third and Washington streets. When the three of us opened the front door, we stepped into a tiny lobby. Another door that led to the rest of the station was locked. A sign on the door directed me to a nearby call box. As I walked over to the box, I noticed two men sitting behind me, talking loudly. Because the lobby was so small, they would easily hear every word I was about to say.

This is uncomfortable, I thought to myself. As I pressed the small gray button and waited for a response, the two men behind me stopped talking.

A man’s voice came over the speaker and asked how he could assist me. Trying to keep my voice low, I said I believed I had been drugged the night before.

“What?” said the voice on the other end.

“I think I may have been drugged.”

“Okay,” he said. “What exactly happened?”

I began to panic. Talking to the anonymous voice while the two strangers eavesdropped was so uncomfortable that I wondered if I should give up and go home.

“Is there anyway I can talk to someone in person about this?” I asked.

The voice told me yes and said to take a seat. I wondered to myself how much worse this experience would be if I had actually been sexually assaulted.

A male officer came to the door 10 to 15 minutes later.

“Who’s here about a possible drugging?” he called out. The two men stared at me. I stood and followed the officer into the station, accompanied by my friends.

I had expected to give my statement at the officer’s desk. Instead he led us into a small interrogation room and offered us seats at a table. Mounted on the wall beside me was a thick metal chain with a loop at the end. I assumed that when criminals were brought in for questioning, they were probably handcuffed to the loop. The idea was a little intimidating.

As I described my encounter with my neighbors’ strange friend, I watched the officer taking notes, his pen jumping across the page.

The officer was kind. When I told him that I had taken the one hit of marijuana, he didn’t judge me. He explained he had never dealt with a drugging but offered to go to my apartment to question my neighbors. This suggestion made me anxious. Because I still lived next to the men, I wanted proof before the police accused them or their friend of anything.

“Do you have to go talk to them right away?” I asked. “I’d like to figure out for sure if I was drugged or not.”

No problem, said the officer. He recommended that I go to Bloomington Hospital to have them test my blood and urine for drugs. He said he’d hold off on taking any action until he heard from me again.

I thanked him, and my friends and I left for the hospital. By this point I’d called my mom in Indianapolis and told her what had happened. She was already on her way and would meet us at the emergency room.

Protocol and pay for drug tests

Date-rape drugs can leave the system within 24 hours, and the best way to detect them is through urine samples collected within 48 to 72 hours of consumption, according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine. This small window of time means response teams must act quickly.

Through his work with the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Chad Sniffens said he has learned that victims frequently run into problems if they decide to report the assault. Victims who work up the courage to go to the police get conflicting advice from law enforcement and local hospitals about what to do and where to go for help.

Many agencies, Sniffens said, lack a common protocol on what to do in such cases. A great deal of variation exists between how different agencies and hospitals collect evidence and test to see if victims have been drugged. Some don’t test at all.

Ross Wantland, assistant director of the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, has created programs to educate students on drug-facilitated sexual assaults. He became interested in the issue after a friend went to the university health center thinking she could be tested for date rape drugs and was denied. Wantland explains that many universities lack the resources to test for these drugs, with cost posing a major problem. The test for GHB alone can be up to $150, a price Wantland said his university was not willing to pay.

Kellie Greene, from Speaking Out Against Rape, reports that many law enforcement agencies and hospitals do not properly train their response teams. Many responders do not know how to recognize the signs that indicate someone might have been drugged. The problem is largely ignored because media interest in date rape tends to cycle; no one’s likely to pay much attention until a high-profile case makes headlines. Until that happens, Greene said it’s important for college women to remember that this can happen to any one.

“The age group that’s most affected think they are invincible. We want to believe that it would never happen to us,” she said. “But the truth is, these criminals are looking for people that are vulnerable. All of us are vulnerable at some point. These criminals could prey on all of us.”

Bloomington Hospital

As I interviewed Greene and the other experts, I kept thinking — this is exactly what happened to me.

I had not been sexually assaulted. But I had been violated. As best I could tell, a predator had slipped something in my water, attempting to make me his prey. And when I went to Bloomington Hospital to get help proving what had happened, I ran into exactly the kinds of problems that the experts say are far too common.

That Saturday afternoon, after leaving the police station, my friends and I went to the emergency room. My mother soon arrived and joined me and my girlfriend in the exam room. I shifted nervously, ruffling the sheets of my hospital bed. The paper gown scratched against my bare skin.

As I waited, the events of the last 12 hours raced through my mind. It seemed like a long, drawn-out dream. My thoughts were interrupted when a nurse practitioner entered the room. She looked about my mother’s age, with long gray curls and glasses that hung against her medical scrubs. She asked me what brought me to the hospital.

“I think I was roofied last night,” I said. “I want to get tested.”

“You want us to test you for roofies?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“We can’t do that,” she said without emotion. “I don’t know what you want me to do for you.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I told her the police had sent me to get tested. Couldn’t she help me?

“Bloomington Hospital doesn’t have any way to test for roofies,” the nurse practitioner continued. “I could test you for drugs like marijuana or ecstasy, but that’s it.”

My mother was growing angry. “What do you mean you can’t test for these drugs?”

“We don’t have the means to do that kind of a test here,” the woman repeated.

“What about taking her urine sample and sending it somewhere else?” my mom said.

“I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t know where we would send it.”

“There has to be something you can do,” my mom said.

The woman insisted there was nothing to be done. She left the room for a moment, and when she opened the door again, I saw the face of a younger nurse looking at me from behind her computer.

“I think I found a place online,” the young nurse said while holding up a phone. “I’m calling to find out.”

The nurse practitioner seemed irritated. “We might be able to test for roofies,” she said. “But in all my experience with victims who have been roofied they don’t remember anything at all, and you’ve been able to tell me some things.”

She seemed to be implying I was lying. As tears ran down my face, she stared past me.

Finally the young nurse determined that they could send my urine to a lab, and the nurse practitioner directed me to the bathroom with a plastic cup. After I filled it, I left as soon as possible. I had gone there wanting some proof, an answer, something. Now I just wanted to go home.

Follow up

After leaving the hospital I realized I’d made a mistake. When I researched date rape drugs online, I discovered that while “roofies” is the term loosely used for all such drugs, it is actually the name of one specific drug, Rohypnol. At the hospital, I had asked to be tested for roofies, not understanding I should have been asking them to test for a variety of other drugs. As a result, I was tested only for Rohypnol.

I learned that Rohypnol leaves a blue color in liquid, meaning it was probably not the drug slipped into my water, which was colorless. I felt stupid for not having known to ask about other drugs and angry I had lost my chance to determine what had happened.

I wrote a letter of complaint to Bloomington Hospital. “I went to your facility with trust and confidence that you could assist me, and I feel as though I was unwelcome and ignored. On a college campus such as IU, I find it hard to believe that my case is an uncommon one,” I wrote. “I only hope that the next time a scared, confused and hurting young woman comes to you for help, you are more willing to provide the services she needs.”

A representative from the hospital called me a couple weeks later to apologize. “In situations like yours, we have a test we’re supposed to run for all the possible date rape drugs,” he said. “I don’t know why that test wasn’t offered to you, but it should have been.”

I requested my medical records to see what had been documented from that day. The reports didn’t reveal much. The hospital recorded that they had cancelled the normal drug test and requested a test for only Rohypnol, and that I was a “poor historian.”

Several months passed without any word on my results. I called the hospital repeatedly but got nowhere. Finally, just last week, almost six months after the test, I went back to the hospital and obtained a copy of the test results, which were sent from a California laboratory. They were negative, but that didn’t surprise me, since they’d only tested for Rohypnol.

By then I was disheartened by the whole ordeal. I had hoped for some answers, and maybe some justice, and failed miserably.

The neighbors whose apartment I visited that night in November still live down the hall. I’ve stayed away from them because I don’t want to run into their friend, the one I’m convinced drugged me. In the months since that night, I’ve run into him a couple times in the hallway. Both times, I’ve ignored his attempts to start up a conversation.

“Oh, it’s the awkward girl,” he said once. I said nothing and quickly entered my apartment, locking the door behind me.

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