DATE RAPE YESTERDAY AND TODAY: Unveiling the Lies
Ovie Farraday
Cant remember how you ended up here? Silence is not consent (Image: Unsplash)
Date rape has been in the news a lot more than usual lately. So much so, that some people might have become a little jaded. This is why we need to bring it a little closer home.
Closer Than It Seems
Has your wife or a female close to you told you a story similar to the following? Or ladies, have you ever had the following happen to you? Say you went out on a date with someone you were not particularly attracted to, perhaps did not even care much for; maybe you went out with him to avoid spending the evening alone, went out on the rebound, or just agreed to one date in order to get him out of your hair? After a drink or two, did you maybe find yourself getting a lot more intimate with him than you normally would have done on a first date and by the end of that evening he was your ‘boyfriend’?
This was Rike’s experience in the eighties after a date with someone she was not particularly attracted to, but chose to go out for drinks with, just to get him out of her hair because he was very persistent.
The incident puzzled her for years even though she then proceeded to be in a relationship with him for about a year. Her best friend Bade and her mulled over this event that was truly uncharacteristic of Rike. The girls sensed something was off but couldn’t put their finger on it. With the same amount of persistence with which he asked her out for drinks, Osa proceeded to badger Rike to become his girlfriend, guilt-tripping her by saying: “You’ve already slept with me. I know you’re a good girl and you don’t want to sleep with many guys. Let’s just stay together so you dont increase your body count” or something to the effect. He touched a nerve, so she shamefacedly embarked on a turbulent one year relationship during which she was constantly breaking up with him and getting back with him at his insistence until Osa left her university. The relationship was not as mutual as it was circumstantial.
The Penny Drops
If this story sounds familiar and that intimacy transition happened without you making a conscious decision to change your mind about your date and the one or two drinks you had that night did not involve anything more intoxicating than you are normally used to; yet, you found yourself acting uncharacteristically intimate with your date, there is a probability that you might have been slipped a drug and might have been an unwitting victim of date rape.
It was not until many years later that Rike and her husband Jide were speaking about something called the “rushing” culture in universities back in the 80’s when gullible, fresh-faced first year female students were inundated with relationship propositions from older students. Rike’s husband shared with her that one practice which upset him was that of the “rushing” exploits of some of his classmates. He was particularly concerned that the inundation of freshers was not limited to simply sweet-talking gullible girls. There were apparently groups of boys who saw no harm in slipping drugs into the drinks of naive young girls in order to make them more sexually malleable. In order to ensure the girls did not have time to process the event and come to the realization that they had been taken advantage of, the guys would then ‘love bomb’ them into a relationship in order to avoid being found out.
As soon as Jide said this, the penny clicked. Rike recognized that the pattern was the same! Then she remembered that the young man Osa, who had love-bombed her after that very peculiar night was a post-graduate student who owned a laboratory and handled chemicals routinely. The 15-year old mystery was finally unraveled!
Silence is Not Consent
Date rape refers to a sexual act between a person who uses physical or psychological intimidation and a victim who engages in sexual intercourse against her will. It includes intimacy with a victim whose consent was not willingly obtained due to incapacitation by consciousness or mind-altering drugs or alcohol.
Although it has become the subject of recent social media attention, date rape has been around for as long as human relationships have existed but it was hard to prove in social situations where the victim and perpetrator were acquainted. It was therefore considered less serious than rape perpetrated by a stranger and until recently, suspicion tended to be cast on women who reported being raped by someone known to them.
Today, there is a much wider awareness of the dangers of date rape and date rape drugs than twenty to thirty years ago. Social media has been instrumental in unmasking date rape practices. Increasingly, the circulation of macabre date drugging stories resulting in nightmares from gang rape, clandestine surgeries for organ theft to abductions, trafficking and modern-day slavery half a world away are no longer strange. However, not that many women know that date rape drugs have been around for a few decades and were probably much closer to them than they realized.
Arguably, as much as three out of five male undergraduates in Nigerian universities might have administered different drugs such as Rohypnol (or others that have a similar hypnotic and or sedative effect on the victim, making them malleable) to ‘score’ with a female on the dating scene in the eighties. These figures are based on anecdotal evidence. Suffice to say that this phenomenon needs to be the subject of more in-depth research.
Not A Stranger
More often than not, date rape is inflicted by a person known to the victim, which is why it is also called “acquaintance rape” or “campus rape” due to its prevalence among college populations. Rape is generally under-reported among teenagers and is even less reported when it occurs during a date. In the seventies and eighties, it was virtually taboo in emerging economies. We might finally know why.
It appears that the perpetrators were taught to parry the incidence into a relationship by love-bombing their victims. Many naive young women who might have been confused about the incident, welcomed the opportunity of a relationship as a face-saving step, rather than the possibility that she had been promiscuous by going too far on a first date.
The truth however, is that if she had a chance to carefully and knowledgeably relive the incident, or if she had paid closer attention to how her drink was handled by her date, she might reach some alarming conclusions about how she was manipulated and preyed on.
Quiet, Invisible but Potent
Newer formulations now contain a dye that turns light-colored drinks blue to increase visibility.
Seek Help
If the foregoing sounds familiar, what should you do with the realization that you might have been date-raped? Seek help. Speak to professionals and your significant other/s. Focus on your healing first.
As part of your healing journey, you might wish to confront your assailant no matter how long it has been. It might be hard to prove that a crime was committed but if you choose to pursue that path, it might give you some closure. However, the way you use that experience going forward is what matters most.
If you are a parent, this knowledge should give you added incentive to educate your teenagers about this subject. Date rape is still alive and well. Share your experience with young adults and teenagers. If your young adult or teenager is female, she needs to understand the dangers of dating, learn to engage in safe dating practices such as dating/going on outings exclusively in groups of trusted/like-minded friends, ensure that she always gets her food/drink herself and of course, never ever return to food/drink she left unattended when in company – whether in public or in private.
If your teenager is male, he should be taught that sex obtained under the influence of mind or consciousness altering substances is rape; it is not consensual and although he might consider that he ‘scored’, it will probably come back to haunt him in really potent ways. If he faces prosecution, his defense team will not be able to get him off because ‘everyone was doing it’.
If you have no children, educate the young people in your community. Be the change you want to see.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Date rape is part of a series of violent acts against women, which include but is not limited to gang rape, acid throwing, breast ironing, bride burning, dowry death and honor killing.
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