(UWIRE) When Kate was 18, she was drugged and raped in her hometown by a man she considered a friend. Now, more than a year and a half later, she is still struggling emotionally from the incident and her rapist has not been taken to justice.
Kate is not alone, but while many like her report the crime, most do not. It can be difficult to prove because drugs generally leave the body within 24 hours.
The three main date-rape drugs are GHB, Rohypnol and Ketamine.
Kate said she was vaguely aware of what had happened.
‘I knew that he did rape me but for how long or what else he did, I didn’t know.’
Kate’s family took her to the hospital to check for sexually transmitted diseases, which she tested negative, and then they filed a report with the police, telling them everything that had happened.
‘They had plenty of evidence,’ she said. ‘I had the underwear. I hadn’t washed them or my jeans. He didn’t even take the underwear off when he raped me, so they had semen on them.’
Kate is now attending Kansas State. It took her a year and two months before she was able to finally tell her story. Meanwhile, nothing has been done to her rapist. Though Kate said she and her parents filed the police report, not even a warrant has been issued for P.’s arrest.
She said her recovery has been long and difficult.
‘It just took a lot of time and a lot of sleep,’ she said. ‘I basically threw away two semesters of school because I couldn’t even get out of bed because it was easier to just sleep then have to think about what was going on.’
Kate wrote a journal entry about how she was feeling:
‘I constantly feel like I’m on the verge of crying, but I won’t let it out because I think it will be easier to just hold it in. I haven’t been eating very much because after I eat I feel really sick to my stomach. I just feel sick with myself. I hate looking in the mirror anymore, because when I do, I hate what I see. I think about it, what happened.’
She said a friend referred her to a counselor, and she finally she has been feeling more like her previous self.
‘I have always been a really strong person,’ she said. ‘Nothing ever has gotten to me, and obviously this has to get to you. I’m not bigger than this problem and it broke me, and it still breaks me every once in a while, but I’ve learned healthy ways of dealing with it.’
As Kate has been improving, she said she realized how much her rape had affected her overall.
‘He took away me,’ she said. ‘He stole me. He stole my identity. He stole my personality and what I did and what I thought was right and what I felt safe doing.’
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John- I would remove your number from this site. Could be a bad deal
My daughter is a freshman at ut and attended a fraternity party at sigma phi epsilon on west swan street this past Wednesday and was given the date rape drug. She past out in her tub and flooded her floor and only was awakened by the pounding of security on her bathroom door. Housing told her that she has to vacate campus housing for vandalism and is charging her a 750 fine. She is telling them that she believes she has been a victim of a crime and no one is doing anything about it. My number is 6462293644