COMPLAINTS GROW OF RAPES AIDED BY DRUGS

Victims awaken with no memory of being assaulted

Local rape crisis counselors and law enforcement officials say they are
seeing an increase in complaints from women and girls who believe they were
raped by men who used drugs to take advantage of them and dim their memory
of the incident.

This week, an 11-year-old Santa Cruz girl was allegedly drugged with heroin
and raped by four teenagers, one of whom she was acquainted with. Three
days later, a 22-year-old UC-Berkeley student was found unconscious and
nearly naked in a apartment hallway but can remember almost nothing about
what happened, leaving police to wonder whether she, too, was drugged and
then raped after attending a friend's birthday party.

Just how often rapists use drugs to incapacitate their victims is unknown
to medical experts, authorities and rape counselors, but many say such
complaints are on the rise.

"I would say in the last three years we've seen a greater increase," said
Carmen Henesy, a registered nurse who works at San Francisco General's Rape
Treatment Center. "The press is reporting these things so people do come
forward where in the past they didn't because they felt nobody would
believe them."

Candace Workman, a crisis counselor at Bay Area Women Against Rape, says
the number of calls her agency gets from women who believe they have been
drugged and then sexually assaulted began increasing about a year ago. Now,
her office gets about a call a week from a woman who has had some sort of
memory lapse while attending a party.

"It's definitely increased in the last year," said Workman. "They call and
say they've had a complete blackout. The last thing they remember was maybe
eight hours before, and they've awakened in bed naked and feel they might
have had sex. They can't remember how they got home from a party."

No one really knows whether more pills are actually being slipped into
women's drinks, or if publicity surrounding the so-called "date-rape" drugs
has heightened not only women's awareness of the problem but that of
medical workers and police, too. Date-rape drugs have become the topic of
seminars, medical journal articles and newspaper stories.

Moreover, cracking a rape case when an unassuming victim believes she has
been drugged is difficult to prove because the details are hazy, and often
by the time a victim seeks treatment, there's little evidence of the crime.

"It disconnects your whole memory system," said Sgt. Kay Lantow, head of
the Berkeley Sex Crimes detail. "People often lose 8 to 10 hours of time in
their life. When they do wake up, they have no memory of what has happened.
. . . They feel fuzzy, and the first thing they want to do is get back in
control of their life so they go to school or work. With most of these
drugs it's gone from the blood in four hours or less, and it's gone from
the urine between 12 and 36 hours, so there is no proof."

Any number of drugs or combination of drugs with alcohol can incapacitate
victims within minutes, but a few have gained national notoriety among law
enforcement authorities and medical experts as the "date-rape" drugs of
choice: Rohypnol, Ketamine and GHB. State law prohibits the possession of
both Rohypnol and GHB, and a bill before the Assembly this year would also
ban Ketamine.

The drugs leave little evidence, most are odorless and colorless, and
victims who have been slipped them unknowingly frequently blame themselves,
thinking they had too much to drink. Lantow said even friends wouldn't
necessarily conclude that someone had been drugged.

"You'd think they'd had too much to drink or were acting silly," said
Lantow. "The person is functioning, they are just disconnected. It's really
sad."

In the case of the UC-Berkeley student, the victim was attending a small
birthday party on Piedmont Avenue. The last thing she remembers is stepping
out for a breath of fresh air. Friends later found her almost nude and
unconscious in a hallway in the building. Doctors at Alta Bates Hospital
who examined her said there were signs she might have been raped.

A week earlier, Berkeley police said another UC student apparently had been
sexually assaulted after attending a party with about 100 people, but could
remember little about what had happened. Police are awaiting results of
toxicology tests to determine whether either girl had been drugged.

In another clear and rare case, four teenage assailants in Santa Cruz gave
an 11-year-old girl heroin to smoke. After being dropped off at a parking
lot, the girl called her parents, who picked her up and noticed she was
extremely high and called police. The girl was able to recall everything
that happened to her after she was treated by doctors with an antidote for
heroin, according to sheriff's spokesman Kim Allyn.

"She said she tried to resist but that she was so drugged that she couldn't
fend anybody off, she was almost comatose," said Allyn.

Rape counselors and authorities are using the month of April to remind
women and girls to be ever cautious with whom they trust. While many fear
being raped by a stranger, the U.S. Department of Justice says 75 percent
of all rapes are committed by someone the victim knew.

"My understanding with the 11-year-old is she knew the men (who picked her
up) in the car, and she probably thought she was safe," Andrea Damon,
sexual assault program coordinator for Women's Crisis Support of Santa
Cruz. "It's not the stranger jumping out of the bushes. It's trust
mistakenly placed in someone that you do not know is worthy of it."

As for parties, they caution, always pour and watch over your own drink.
"They should be really cautious of anything they drink," Workman said.
"They shouldn't drink something they didn't make themselves, drink from a
can they didn't open or leave their drink at any time."

)1998 San Francisco Examiner