Overview

Rapists aren't always strangers. When someone you know - a date, steady boyfriend, or casual friend - forces you to have sex, it's still rape.

Preventing Date Rape

As a woman, you can:

• Be careful not to let alcohol or other drugs decrease your ability to take care of yourself and make sensible decisions.
• Check out a first date or a blind date with friends. Meet in and go to public places. Carry money for a phone call or taxi or take your own car.
• Do not accept beverages from someone you don't know and trust. Always watch your drink and never leave it unattended.
• Don't leave a social event with someone you've just met or don't know well.
• Trust your instincts. If a place or the way your date acts makes you nervous or uneasy, get out.

As a man, you can:

• Accept a woman's decision when she says "no". Don't see it as a challenge.
• Ask yourself how sexual stereotypes affect your attitudes and actions toward women.
• Avoid clouding your judgment and understanding of what another person wants by using alcohol and other drugs.
• Never be drawn into gang rape.
• Realize that forcing a woman to have sex against her will is rape, a violent crime with serious consequences.
• Seek counseling or a support group to help you deal with feelings of violence and aggression toward women.

What are Date Rape Drugs

• GHB (also know as "liquid X", "salt water", or "scoop") also causes quick sedation. Its effects are drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, coma, and death. Its most common form is a clear liquid although it can also be a white, grainy powder.
• Rohypnol ("roofies", "roopies", "circles", "the forget pills") works like a tranquilizer. It causes muscle weakness, fatigue, slurred speech, loss of motor coordination and judgment, and amnesia that lasts up to 24 hours. It looks like an aspirin - small, white, round.

Rohypnol and GHB are called the date rape drugs because when they are slipped into someone's drink, a sexual assault can take place without the victim being able to remember what happened.

If Date Rape Happens

• Get counseling to deal with the emotional trauma.
• Get help. Don't isolate yourself, don't feel guilty, and don't try to ignore it. It is a crime and should be reported.
• Get medical attention as soon as possible. Do not shower, wash, douche, or change your clothes. Valuable evidence could be destroyed.
• If you think you've been assaulted while under the influence of Rohypnol or GHB, seek help immediately, try not to urinate before providing urine samples and, if possible, collect any glasses from which you drank.