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Who is Watching Your Drink? On Friday, December 1st, 2006, the Coalition Against Violence hit the local bar scene to raise awareness around the use of ‘date rape drugs’. Drink coasters sporting the slogan ‘Who is watching your drink?,’ as well as relevant contact information, were ‘slipped’ to unsuspecting patrons when they were not looking. The purpose was to bring to light for bar patrons a worst case scenario in order to encourage them to be more cautious of their environs when partying, particularly where alcohol and other drugs are involved, as they indeed interfere with one’s sense of judgment.
A secondary goal of the campaign is to do away with the misleading term ‘date rape’. Oftentimes, those slipping a drug into the drink of an unsuspecting victim are friends, acquaintances, even strangers. Only a portion of these cases involve a dating relationship. For this reason, terms like ‘rape drugs’ or ‘drug facilitated sexual assault’ are more accurate. The motive of slipping a friend or an acquaintance a drug may not be to facilitate a sexual assault, but, to induce an involuntary trip. The mental anguish an involuntary trip can produce, particularly if the person drugged is sexually exploited due to their woozy dissociative state, can have irreversible damage.
“This is a key point to make,” says Dana English, Coalition Coordinator. “What you might think is a bit of fun could turn out to be the worst night of someone’s life. You might have no intention of sexually assaulting the person you drugged. But someone else might take the opportunity you have provided.”
In response to the growing numbers of victims presenting at the newly formed Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners clinic in St. John’s with partial or total blackout despite moderate drinking the night prior, drug facilitated sexual assault is presenting itself as a harsh reality on the local scene – for women and men, in bars and at house parties. To learn more about drug facilitated sexual assault, click here.
For more information or for support, contact: NL Sexual Assault Crisis & Prevention Centre (709) 726-1411/Toll-free: 1-800-726-2743 www.nlsacpc.com
Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner,
Eastern Health NL Sexual Health Centre (709) 579-1009/Toll-free: 1-877-NO-MYTHS (1-877-666-9847) www.nlsexualhealthcentre.org Sexual Harassment Advisory, Memorial University (709)737-2015 www.mun.ca/sexualharassment To check out some of the media coverage around our coaster campaign, click here. |
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Send mail to
cavae@coalitionagainstviolence.ca
with questions or comments about this web site.
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