“If it happens once, it’s a problem”: Vermillion’s undercover date rape drug problem
Waking up in her bed, not knowing how she got there, Katherine Meirose made her way to her bathroom. There, she quickly discovered she had a black eye and no memory of how it happened.
Meirose said her first thought was, “I didn’t drink that much and didn’t have a hangover. How do I not remember what happened?” After detailing her lack of memory to her mom they realized Meirose hadn’t been too drunk, she had been drugged at a downtown bar.
According to Medicine Net, the most common date rape drugs are Rohypnol (roofies), gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB or liquid ecstasy) and Ketamine (Special K).
These drugs are extremely fast-acting and are often flushed out of the body in less than 12 hours, Crystal Brady, Lieutenant of investigations for Vermillion Police Department, said.
Lt. Brady said if someone is drugged, it takes a while for them to wake up and figure out what happened.
“Oftentimes if you’re outside of that 12-hour window it is difficult to know whether or not that was part of what’s going on,” Lt. Brady said.
Because there isn’t just one type of date rape drug, it’s hard to know what the side effects are and how potentially dangerous these drugs are, Lt. Brady said. It also has a lot to do with how much of the drug is given and the size and sex of the victim.
Meirose has very little memory of the night she was drugged but said she was able to piece together small parts with the help of her friends.
Meirose said she has experience drinking; it’s part of the social experience. She said she knows how alcohol affects her body as she reviewed it by reading from this imp source trying to avoid drinking completely from her life, which will be possible when she starts to reduce the number of times she drinks in a day.
“I’ve been drunk a number of times; this was different. I can’t explain any way other than that,” she said.
The drug Meirose was given made her act “not like herself.” She said she’s a relatively reserved person, which doesn’t typically change when she drinks. When her friends recounted the night to her, Meirose said she was embarrassed. They were telling her things she would never do.
Meirose said she was not in control of her body that night; she said the drug and the perpetrator were in control.
“It was an experience unlike any other,” Meirose said. “Just to have hours upon hours of lost time where I was awake and I was talking to people and I was interacting with people and I couldn’t tell you who I saw.”
After calling her mom and friends and finding out what happened that night, Meirose called VPD and filed a report.
Officers came and took pictures of her black eye and the jacket she was wearing and offered to take her to the hospital to get tested for drugs. Meirose wasn’t able to find someone to cover her shift at Dakota Brickhouse. She couldn’t miss work and was unable to go complete the tests in the designated 12-hour time frame.
“I did not get tested. I was really shaken up, I was really, really shaken up,” Meirose said. “The idea of going into a police station and having to do everything again. I can’t explain it, it was just too much for me at once. Especially with the very short window of time from when I filed the report and when I had to go to work because no one would cover me.”
Going to work with a visible injury she said, was devastating. Her coworkers laughed at her the night before because they thought she was passed out drunk in an alleyway and they continued to laugh at how drunk she was the next day, she said.
When she was found in the alley behind The Mainstreet Pub, the Pub employee took Meirose back to Brickhouse. She was found with her pants unbuttoned and a bruise forming on her head. And they all thought, Meirose said, she had just had too much to drink.
“To be met with such a vulnerable and horrifying experience with the laughter, that hurt. It was the farthest thing from funny to me,” Meirose said.
While date rape drugs are often associated with sexual assaults, Meirose wasn’t sexually assaulted. She said being on her period might have prevented the assault.
“To me, I was lucky. The worst I got out of it was a black eye and some horrifying anxiety,” Meirose said. “I have never been so grateful that I was on my period. That could have saved me in some way.”
“I was always blaming myself.”
Meirose didn’t experience a hangover after being drugged, she said. Another victim, who wishes to remain anonymous — who The Volante will refer to as Jane — said it was the worst hangover of her life.
Jane was drugged in downtown Vermillion, not once but twice. The first time was by the guy she had been talking to.
“He was mad that I broke it off,” Jane said. “It was a night that (it happened) I wasn’t actually drinking; it was a night that I was only drinking water. It was really weird when all of a sudden I was starting to act intoxicated. All my friends kind of stuck around me because they realized something was wrong.”
The next day, while experiencing the worst hangover of her life, Jane said she knew something wasn’t right. She said she spent the majority of the day throwing up and even the next day was fuzzy.
After suffering most of the morning, Jane decided to go get tested. Jane tested positive for date rape drugs. Despite the positive test result, Jane didn’t make an official police report. It was too much for her at once, she said.
While she could have reported it, she said she didn’t think anything would come from it because she hadn’t been sexually assaulted.
“It just gets put into a file and it’s just there,” Jane said.
The second time was more intense, Jane said. She doesn’t know who drugged her or where it happened. Luckily, she said, both times she was with a group of friends who were able to help her stay safe.
“I remember looking at one of my roommates and saying something’s not right, I feel very much not with it … Later I disappeared and (my friends) came looking for me and there were a few guys kind of trying to talk to me out in the back and touching me, not inappropriately but touching me,” Jane said. “I had one of my really good friends walk out and apparently, they were like ‘something’s not right here’ and they grabbed me … and they took me home.”
Getting drugged once before, Jane said she knew what had happened the next morning. She said she blamed herself after the fact and didn’t understand why it happened to her or why it happened twice.
Even though she said she knows it’s not her fault, it’s internally hard for her to comprehend.
“It was like am I not being careful enough? What am I doing wrong? I was never blaming the other person, I was always blaming myself,”
Jane said.
Now, at almost 23-years-old, Jane doesn’t socialize like she used to. She said it took her a while to go back downtown after these incidents, and when she does go, it’s not the same.
Jane said she has always believed people should be able to dress how they want and show as little or as much skin as they want, but now she finds herself changing what she wears. She does this for peace of mind and to try to protect herself.
“It’s a mindset of what am I wearing that’s making it happen, which is horrible,” Jane said. “That’s not an excuse for someone to do it, but I think it’s just nailed into our society. It sucks that I have to change or I feel like I have to change for stuff not to happen.”
A shared drink, shared story
In the days following her incident, Meirose said she called VPD twice and left messages to try and get an update on her report. They never called her back and nothing was ever solved, Meirose said.
In her calls to friends, Meirose discovered there was an older man who had bought her a drink. The police had looked through security footage at Pub and were able to find the older man. Meirose said despite this, Pub refused to give his name to the police.
“The bar would not release the name of the gentleman who bought me a drink because he was a regular there. They didn’t want to cause any issues,” Meirose said. “I was so furious. It felt like they were choosing someone over me and my safety. To me, it was like you gave them his name and they talked to him and if he didn’t do anything, what’s the problem?”
Meirose said she regrets taking the time to report it because “nothing good” came from it.
“What I got from it wasn’t worth the horrible stress and anxiety of having to recant my embarrassing story in front of a group of men,” Meirose said.
While some of her coworkers didn’t believe her, Meirose said she was lucky to have a support system who did. Meirose said she wasn’t the only one of her friends who was drugged that night.
Kile Evans and Eden Hemmingson are roommates and both worked with Meirose at Brickhouse. The night of the incident, Meirose told Evans to meet her at Pub after his shift. He said yes and Hemmingson came and met them.
When they got to Pub they decided to share a fishbowl, a large alcoholic drink while they waited for Meirose, Hemmingson said. After finishing their drink, they decided to head back to Brickhouse. Hemmingson said she doesn’t remember anything after leaving Pub.
“It was maybe within 10 minutes of like drinking the bowl that all of a sudden I just don’t remember,” Hemmingson said. “I don’t remember how we got home. … My car was home, my keys were home. Did I drive? I don’t know. It’s super dangerous.”
Hemmingson experienced worse side effects the next morning, as GHB drug — what they assume they were given — affects people with higher estrogen levels more intensely. Hemmingson said she had uncontrollable sneezes for the entire next day, on top of throwing up foam like substances.
The drug didn’t have the same effects on Evans but he still can’t remember anything from the night. Lt. Brady said drugs affect sexes differently, which would explain why he didn’t sneeze or throw up the next day.
He was able to go to work the next day where he saw Meirose and her black eye. Evans and Hemmingson said they began piecing their night together after hearing Meirose talk about what she had experienced.
By the time they realized what had happened it was too late to get tested. The pair were ridiculed, just as Meirose was. The three supported each other as they began to heal.
“Not a lot of people have a person to talk to about what happened,” Evans said. “So to be able to discover what happened and then be able to be like this happened and then have a support group is something we’re very grateful for.”
Meirose said she chose to grow from the incident.
“I decided when that happened I’m not going to let that control me,” Meirose said. “Whoever did this had control over me for those hours, but I’m not going to let them have control over me again, the best I can.”
Both Meirose and Jane said date rape drugs are used more than people think. Meirose said the worst part is it only takes a moment.
“Looking away from an open drink for even one second and being as careful as possible, still isn’t always enough to stay safe,” Meirose said.
“It definitely changed me quite a bit.”
Sergeant Bryant Jackson, University Police Department, said these drugs are not common at USD, but if there was an incident, UPD would do whatever they could to help the victim.
He said Vermillion is generally a safe place, but it is important to remain aware of surroundings while in a drinking situation.
“One of the biggest things to take from that is we don’t want to be complacent because of that. Whether it’s from the law enforcement aspect or a personal safety aspect, there are things we can do to look after ourselves,” Jackson said. “Regardless of whether a community is safe, which I think Vermillion is, we want to practice those safe practices.”
Now, whenever Jane goes out, she only buys one drink at a time and she covers her drink with her hand. She has switched to mainly bottled beverages; which makes it easier to cover her drink. If she ever sets her drink down, she throws it away.
Jane said she has “faith in humanity” and wants to believe people are good. That made processing the negativity she suffered hard to process.
“It really hurt and I just remember feeling degraded. It definitely changed me quite a bit,” Jane said.
Lt. Brady said VPD doesn’t see a lot of date rape drug-related cases in Vermillion. She said she thinks people think it happens more than it actually does. Most of the reports made are people losing count of how many drinks they’ve had and not actually drugs, UPD said.
“The most important thing is not to binge drink. I understand that people want to go out and they think binge drinking is going to lead to fun, but it’s dangerous,” Lt. Brady said. “In a lot of the cases that we’ve had it just turned out that they ended up consuming more alcohol than they thought. (Alcohol also) can be considered a date rape drug in itself.”
Meirose disagrees with the idea that there aren’t a lot of date rape drug-related cases in Vermillion. She said once she started talking about what happened to her, she learned many others had either been drugged themselves or knew someone who was. With her visible black eye, she was forced to talk about it and she said she refused to lie. Talking about it was her way to prove that what happened was real and that it just overconsumption.
“It was embarrassing for me, why would I say this kind of stuff, when it really puts me in a tough position and it’s not easy for me to talk about,” Meirose said. “Why would I talk about it if it wasn’t true?”
Meirose said she wishes VPD took these cases more seriously.
“If it happens once, it’s a problem. If it worked once, what’s stopping them from doing it again,” Meirose said. “I am incredibly disappointed, but it just means the responsibility to be safe is all on us. If they’re not going to help us, we have to do it for ourselves, which is frustrating because that’s their job.”
This is an ongoing story. The Volante will be covering other angles regarding date rape drugs in the next weeks, including the bar owners’ angle, Greek life aspect and counseling options. If you have any information you would like to share please email The Volante at [email protected].
