Alcohol and Acquaintance Rape among Female College Students
... either the victim's or the assailant's home, apartment, or dormitory (RARCC, 2004). One cannot identify an acquaintance rapist on the basis of his appearance. When most people think of rape, they envision a stranger, usually a black, Hispanic, or other minority, jumping out of the bushes at an unsuspecting female, with a weapon and assaulting her (Warshaw, 1994). The truth is that he can be anybody from a classmate, a boyfriend, a hall mate, a neighbor, or family friend. The rapist’s primary goal is to increase the victim’s vulnerability by being charming and giving false promises. He is usually manipulative and will try to get her alone with him (Romeo, 2004). By manipulative, I mean that they are usually very persuasive and say the type of things that we women want to hear. They will gain the victims trust and acceptance as a friend. Approximately seventy-eight percent of rapes are committed by a person the victim knows (RARCC, 2004). If the rapist cannot get the victim to voluntarily go somewhere with him, he is most likely to use drugs or alcohol to obtain his will. Drinking alcohol or taking drugs appears to be associated with acquaintance rape. Some of the most common drugs used are Ketamine “Special K”, Rohypnol “roofies”, and GHB (Romeo, 2004). These drugs are colorless, odorless, and tasteless; therefore they can be slipped into the victim’s drink, where they dissolve within seconds. The majority of these drugs take effect within fifteen and twenty minutes of ingestion and the sedation can last up to twenty-four hours. The side effects of these drugs are very similar to alcohol intoxication, such as slurred speech, fatigue and amnesia. These drugs cause the victim to not remember what happened fifteen minutes after they took the drug. Most rapists prefer this type of weapon because since the victim is unable to recall the situation, it is most likely that they will not provide valuable information to the authorities (Romeo, 2004). Therefore, no charges may be filed. Alcohol is also a very strong weapon rapist use to get their victims into a state of unconscious and commit their crimes. Victims are occasionally blamed for being irresponsible and being too drunk to know what they are doing. What we need to understand is that a woman who is intoxicated, either by alcohol or drugs, is not considered to have given legal consent to any type of sexual assault (Romeo, 2004). Just because she is drunk and passed out, does not justify a man to take advantage. In college, alcohol is present at every party. The reason people drink is to get drunk (RARCC, 2004). The correlation between alcohol consumption and the chances of being victim of sexual assault is pretty high. About seventy-five percent of the men and at least fifty-five percent of the women involved in acquaintance rapes had been drinking or taking drugs just before the attack (Warshaw, 1994). The damage that rape does is invisible; it doesn’t leave marks on the body as much as it leaves marks on the mind and soul. It causes serious emotional violence. Victims have been diagnosed with Rape Trauma Syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The rape victim displays a variety of symptoms such as blaming themselves, anxiety, guilt, depression, shame, anger, and fear of their personal safety (Romeo, 2004). After rape, victims have a tendency to blame themselves. They think it happened to them because they did something wrong. Victims have a tendency to blame themselves for not following their instincts (Warshaw, 1994). After rape woman tend to withdraw themselves from social interactions because they cannot trust their judgment (Parrot, 1990). Before the rape, she couldn’t tell who would be a rapist, but after the rape, all men can be viewed as potential rapist. A very common aftereffect of acquaintance rape is the difficulty to open up and be intimate with a person. It can take as little as a few weeks or as long as several years (Warshaw, 1994). On the other hand, women can become promiscuous. Many women who were virgins before the assault believed that virginity was good and that being a non-virgin was unethical. These types of women grew up in good homes with strong values and believe. She may believe that no man will want to be with her because she is no longer a virgin. Therefore, she will have no reason to refuse having sex with somebody from the opposite sex who is willing to have intercourse with her.(Parrot, 1990). Acquaintance rape is an underreported crime. Government estimated find that anywhere from three to ten rapes are committed for every one rape reported (Warshaw, 1994). Many victims of acquaintance rape fail to recognize it as rape; therefore they don’t report it to the police. It is much easier for a rape victim to blame a stranger than to blame someone they know. Survey conducted by Bondurant in 2001, found that sixty-four percent of college women did not acknowledge the rape, much less report it (Barnett, 2005). There are many reasons why women who are raped by acquaintances choose not to report the assaults. Some of those reasons are fear of further injury or retaliation from the offender, confusion as to whether consent was given, because of the trusting relationship with the offender, and self-blame because she may believe that she did not do all she could to prevent the rape (Romeo, 2004). One major reason why women don’t report acquaintance rape is because men turn the story around and blame the victims. Some of the things they say are that she is lying, she has emotional problems, she hates men, she is covering up her own promiscuous behavior”, (Warshaw, 1994). I was also very interested in this topic because it happened to one of my best friends while she was attending Cal State University, Long Beach. During her freshman year, she and three other girls shared an apart...