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On This Page:
Situational Context
Table of
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Predominance of Alcohol and
Drugs
- I wish to discuss a predominant
situational factor that appeared to influence the behaviors of many
of the perpetrators who participated in this study.
- Alcohol is a prominent
contributing factor to date rapes. Obviously, both alcohol and
drugs tend to lower inhibitions from standard societal mores.
- These phenomena were
evident in this study as well.
- Thirteen (72%) of the male
participants stated during in-depth personal interviews – without a
question requesting this information – that they had been drinking
alcohol prior to the date rape incident, while seven (39%) of the
men also confessed to being alcoholics at the time of the sexual
assault.
- In contrast, they reported that seven (39%) of the female
victims had been drinking before the sexual incident.
- Again, these
percentages are based on voluntary information without an inquiry
prompt, so actual percentages were undoubtedly higher.
- Considering
the wide-spread and often reported binge drinking on college
campuses, where date rapes frequently occur and are seldom reported,
this situational factor is alarming.
Prominent Role of Social
Drinking
- From closely scrutinizing the interview
transcripts, one can learn how social drinking, a common practice in
dating, can play a significant role in sexual assault incidents by
lowering individuals' inhibitions and negatively affecting sober and rational perspectives.
For
instance, Interviewee 5 described his drinking prior to a date rape
experience. He recalled:
She asked me if I wanted a beer. I said, ‘Yeah, I'll take a beer.’
So, she gives me a beer and everything, and I'm sitting there
drinking a beer with her, and she pokes the top and everything and
she asks me, ‘Have you ever done a cannonball?’ I said, ‘What do you
mean, a cannonball?’ She goes, ‘Well, that's where you take your
beer and you just down it. Just pop the cap and down it and it all
goes down at one time; then, when the air goes up to the top, fluid
sort of comes out--faster. And you call it a cannonball. And it gets
you pretty drunk.’ If my memory serves me right, she drunk a lot
more than me. She would drink, like Screwdrivers, which is like
vodka and orange juice, or she would–-there was this one drink and
she got me hooked on it; I drank it today. It’s called a Georgia
Snakebite....She's drinkin' all those drinks and I'm sittin' there
drinking the beer....I'm feeling pretty good....[We were
both] beyond the driving point.
Another example of casual drinking that had dangerous side effects
for the dating couple was shared by Interviewee 13, who recollected:
I drank some beer. She was drinkin' whiskey--bourbon, I guess.
Bourbon and coke. I didn't drink that stuff. She had them both goin',
but she wasn't drinkin' until I got there. She had some already
there. And then she decided. I told her ...'Do you want me to
make you a drink?' She said, ‘That's fine.’ We got to drinkin' and,
uh I was already drunk. I drank a lot of beer. I'm an alcoholic.
This drinking description adds the variable that
Interviewee 13 was
an alcoholic. I did not get the impression from my interview with
him that his female victim realized that he had a drinking problem.
Alcoholism
- Alcoholism can be seen as having date
rape consequences if the reader observes a chaining together of two
male informants’ accounts of their drinking before the sexual
assaults.
The first male perpetrator,
Interviewee 10, observed her increasing drunkenness and admitted
realizing that it could assist him in making her defenseless during
an upcoming sexual encounter. He asserted:
She was getting pretty
lit. Pretty drunk. Which, that didn't bother me at
all.
The other participant quoted below
illustrated how drinking, combined with drug use, can gravitate
toward or escalate into a sexual encounter.
Interviewee 12 recalled:
She was kind of drunk. [I knew this because of . . .] the way she
was coming up to me, kinda. If you're not drinking, you can kinda
tell if someone's drunk 'cause they're slurring their voice and they
kind of stagger a little bit. You know. I had to set her down on one
occasion 'cause it looked like she was gonna fall over or something.
We both was drunk. We rolled down to my house to get some . . .
marijuana. We started smoking some weed. Yeah, another thing of
marijuana. So, we . . . smoked another one and everything. As we're
smoking it, I'm sitting there, rubbin' all on her stomach, and on
her legs and everything.
Date Rape: Not Just Due to Alcohol
- I do not want readers to
think that I believe the
presence of alcohol in these dating situations was the over-arching
reason for the date rape incidents reported.
- To the contrary, I
received the impression that the perpetrators would have performed
their sexual initiatives under virtually any conditions.
- Two
perpetrators testify to this conclusion:
- Interviewee 2 remarked: “At
that time, I was obnoxious whether I was drinking or not. If I
hadn’t had any drinks, I still would have tried that [forcing sex].”
- Another male participant, Interviewee 3, frankly admitted:
“I’m not blamin’ what I’m doin’ on drinkin’, ‘cause I’m still in the state of
mind where I know what I’m doin’. And I know why I had Angie come
there.”
- You can see from these
apparently honest statements that other factors can have a
significant impact on the events leading up to a date rape.
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Research Findings
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