I WAS date-raped. That got your attention. If you read on, you might save someone you love, or yourself, from being raped.
I was not actually raped, but I did save someone from being raped. I did nothing praiseworthy apart, perhaps, from writing this column to warn the uninformed about date-rape drugs; how easily they are administered, in what unlikely places and by what unlikely people they are used, and how vulnerable unsuspecting victims are. I was not in a dodgy bar or sleazy club, but at the closing banquet of a distinguished conference with reputable intellectuals, entrepreneurs and journalists.
I saved the woman concerned, unwittingly, by drinking laced wine intended for her. I seldom drink alcohol and did so this once to be congenial. When the flirtatious man on her other side went to take a call, the woman noticed that I had no drink. She shifted the glass he had poured for her to me, and summoned a waiter for another. The man returned, presuming her to be drinking from the glass he had prepared for her.
I left early to do some work. In my hotel room, I started to feel peculiar. It got worse. I needed to call for help but standing and walking caused me to deteriorate so rapidly that I never reached the telephone on the far side of the bed. I collapsed onto the bed and lost consciousness, my fingers just centimetres from the telephone. Hours later, I started drifting in and out of consciousness. I believed I had suffered such a severe stroke, it would not be worth living, so I made no effort to call for help even though I now could.
I regained full consciousness when it was getting light. I contrived tests to see how severe my “stroke” had been. To my surprise, I could read aloud, walk in a straight line, balance on one leg, operate the television remote, recall details in my computer and make a phone call. I asked the friend I called if I was incoherent. “No worse than usual,” he quipped.
When I related the story at breakfast, streetwise people concluded that it had been a date-rape drug intended for the woman. One of them said she had been drugged and date-raped under similar circumstances. When she had started feeling unstable a man escorted her to her room. She had “had too much to drink and should lie down to sleep it off”, he said as he supported her to her bed before supposedly leaving. She recalls nothing until she emerged from her stupor at sunrise. She was suspicious because she had not consumed much alcohol. Although she believes he raped her, she could neither recall nor prove it.
“Wouldn’t you have his DNA on and in you?” I asked. “No semen if he used a condom,” she said. “His defence regarding such evidence as hair would be that it was present because he helped me to my room and bed.”
“Wouldn’t blood tests reveal the drug?” “Yes, but how would I pin it on him?”
“What makes you sure you weren’t raped?” asked a gay man. “Many men are raped.” Mercifully, I was conscious when I entered my room and latched the door.
You, dear reader, and those around you might be blissfully unaware of how common date-rape drugs are, how many rapes are unreported, and how many victims do not know they were raped. Some “know” they were, but can neither swear to it nor prove it. Some date-rape victims are gang-raped.
Be mindful of how easily anyone, including you, can be drugged as a prelude to being raped and robbed.
• Louw is executive director of the Free Market Foundation
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