Now let's get past the completely inaccurate and dangerous headline - because the fact of the matter is that women have been and continue to be raped by the usage of date rape drugs - and look at the very first line of the piece:
A study of more than 200 students revealed many wrongly blamed the effects of a 'bad night out' on date-rape drugs, when they had just drunk excessively.
Equating sexual assault with a "bad night out" is just wrong, wrong, wrong. The Telegraph has a history of making light of as well as publishing full-blown inaccuracies of sexual assault and this is no different. By using this drunken night boozin' rhetoric and other language like talking about women "losing control" over drinking later in the piece, it not only implies that rape survivors weren't raped if they just drank too much, but also offers your run-of-the-mill victim blaming for women who are raped while intoxicated. How they manage to do both is beyond me.
The thing that really chaps my ass is that we caught this piece over a month after it was published, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be called out on. Contact them and tell them to pull the piece or to accurately reflect the realities of date rape drugs and sexual assault. We did it before, we can do it again.
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I wrote them.
From what I understand, we can't actually tell how many people have had spiked drinks because those types of drugs don't stay present in the body long enough to be detected, right? So a hospital doing tests on people who come in after an assault may very well not find any positive results despite an actual drugging? You'd have to look at circumstantial evidence such as one drink causing effects you'd only expect to find after 8 drinks.
On the flip side, it very well could be the case that not many people are actually being drugged and that perps are simply assaulting people who are drunk, and the researchers (whose words I realize could be taken very differently if we knew the context of their studies, since we all know how good the media is at reporting studies accurately) are onto something when they suggest that we use the fear of date rape drugs for other purposes.
However, we wouldn't NEED those other purposes if we could remove all victim blaming and say, "Yeah, so she got drunk and was assaulted, but who cares that she was drunk? The only person to blame is the guy who assaulted her, getting drunk does not make it her fault." The way this Telegraph article presents it, the lack of roofie evidence is damning for the woman, and that's just fucked up.
"From what I understand, we can't actually tell how many people have had spiked drinks because those types of drugs don't stay present in the body long enough to be detected, right?"
But alcohol does stay in the body long enough to be detected. If someone's incapacitated and you detect an incapacitating dose of alcohol, there's not much need to worry about spiking.
Wrong. My mom was given GHB at a bar and got a drug test to prove it. Thankfully, she didn't end up with whoever gave it to her that night, but did end up with a DUI, even with the test proving she was given GHB.
She has a sentence deferment now. She has to spend a day in jail, keep a clean record and not drink for five years, and see a parole officer for two. That will keep it off her record entirely, I think. The hair-based drug test detected GHB several months after the incident, but was probably too expensive for many people in this situation, and I hate to think how many women have gotten even worse.
I'll be writing to these assholes.
Ah, I'm starting to think that the data I've heard relates to blood tests, while urine and hair retains the evidence much longer?
I have a question which I think is relevant.
"Now let's get past the completely inaccurate and dangerous headline - because the fact of the matter is that women have been and continue to be raped by the usage of date rape drugs"
How do we know this to be true?
I mean, I guess I'm playing devil's advocate here, but the point of the article is that this is the assumption normally made, except new data shows that it practically never does.
You haven't really responded to the argument at all ... all you've done is reiterate the assumption. Bold text is not an argument.
Maybe if you supplied some data of your own? Anecdotal evidence doesn't work here, because that's one of the things which the article takes issue with - that people's own testimony seems to actually be unreliable, and inconsistent with the results when they are tested for the date rape drug.
You ask that we demand The Telegraph reports "accurately" on this issue - but how do we know what "accurately" is? Do you have data which contradicts theirs?
If all we do is continue to present the same assumptions, in refutation of available evidence, how will we know when we have made progress? For instance, if new data showed a huge drop in rapes, would we simply insist that the data cannot be right, even without any proper arguments (e.g. data) of our own?
How do we know that women are being given date rape drugs? Well, because often times those women do go to the hospital and the drugs are found in their system, and sometimes the women recognize the drug in their drink and report the tampering. We know that women have been raped as a result of being slipped drugs, and since those drugs are still readily available, there's no reason to think that men will not continue to try to give them to unsuspecting women.
Are the majority of rapes or even date rapes committed with the help of a "date rape drug?" No. And I don't think anyone is arguing that. But the Telegraph is trying to make the argument that no one has ever been raped after being drugged simply because some women assume that they were drugged when they really just drank too much.
What the Telegraph is doing is pushing the blame onto the woman. If a woman is drugged and then raped, well, it's not her fault! She was just unlucky. But if a woman got herself all liquored up, got herself raped, and then thought that maybe she'd been drugged, well, that's all on her.
A lot of interviews have been done with bartenders who report that they are offered money alarmingly often to slip a mickey in a woman's drink when a guy is getting it for her. That way the woman can receive the drink direct from the bartender, thinking she's safe because she's behaving according to all the "how not to get raped" rules (you know, the ones like wearing a burka all the time, that are totally foolproof provided you are never in proximity to a rapist), and the rapist still has an easy time of incapacitating her.
Also tests have been done on residue in glasses around nightclubs, that people left after drinking the contents. I read one report that said about 8% of glasses had drugs in them. Now some of these may be people taking ketamine etc for fun. But how many? Who knows? And how many want to take a little bit of a drug for recreation, as with alcohol, but not enough to be totally incapacitated?
Those are two ways already used to examine evidence for use of date rape drugs without asking rapists to self-report or relying on evidence that leaves the bloodstream too fast to be useful. Another option would be to just blood-test EVERY woman leaving a given nightclub (you could pay them for their time) while asking them, anonymously, if they took any drugs that evening. People are surprisingly honest in such surveys if their anonymity is assured.
I read one report that said about 8% of glasses had drugs in them.
Citation?
Can we please stop saying "a lot of x people do y thing" ? I know that it's tough to always source our information, but if we don't and we make claims we commit the same fallacies that we accuse people like the writer a telegraph of. I agree with Shiny Suds that we can't just say "This is wrong!" because it contradicts the way we think of things. Evidence is important. Even if something is inconvenient or upsetting, we need to know if it is true.
I'm not saying that the telegraph writing is accurate, but I'm also not quite seeing the claims that we say they are making, such as blaming women for being raped. Also, they cite studies and professionals. Not that they are infallible, but it's better than "That's wrong!"
Nice victim blaming too. "Women it's your fault if you drank too much alcohol."
How about "acadamics" determining that raping someone non-sentient is evil, whether the victim is drugged, drunk, or merely asleep?
That is not what the article is getting at at all.
It is addressing the fact that people are underestimating the utility of alcohol as a date rape drug, and the actual usage of other date rape drugs.
It is quizzical that women will protect one date rape drug (an alcoholic drink) from being spiked with another date rape drug.
And the article is just pointing out that you don't really need to fear the other date rape drug, the one in your hand is bad enough.
Yeah, a study on 200 people is really reputable. Eyeroll.
Well, to be fair, all they seem to be asking those 200 about are their attitudes about date rape drugs. I'm not sure what's unreputable about that. The article mentions other studies have tried to prove widespread use of date rape drugs and came up with nothing. I'm assuming that the scientists quoted in this Telegraph article started their study because they were curious about these other studies. They were probably wondering, "Why do we warn people to not accept drinks from strangers so much if these studies aren't finding any positive results for date rape drugs?" and set out to gather some data to explore this question.
It rarely seems to be the "academics" (as rustyspoons called them above) who do the judging - they're just looking for information. The media reporting on the studies add the judgment all on their own by misconstruing the results or misunderstanding the purpose of the study.
Actually, a study of 200 people can be reputatable, depending on the population, the phenomenon involved, and the research model being utilized.
It can actually be quite authoritative.
It wasn't a study of 200 people. It's a review of the data that looks at previous published work on date rape drugs. The amount of total people studied is probably in the thousands. The researchers also did a smaller study of their own to determine people's attitudes and ideas about date rape drugs. That study of 200 people isn't what they used to determine that date rape drugs aren't common.
Vanessa: The original article, by Burgess et al., doesn't equate rape to a "bad night out." For instance, it has this to say: "Students in many cases judged certain bad-night-out episodes (loss of memory, blackouts, ill feeling, dizziness) as likely to be related to tampering of drinks rather than the quantity of drink itself." They're referring to people who *weren't* sexually assaulted, but ascribed their symptoms of extreme drunkenness or hangover to roofies.
More generally, you seem not to have read the original research article (you can access it here -- http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/ -- I'm not a sociologist & I found it clear and easy to read). That being the case, I think it's irresponsible, even a bit anti-intellectual, to trash the authors' research conclusions. Feministing is a pretty widely-read blog and it makes sense to know what you're talking about before you denounce something on the main page. Read the research paper, then if you find problems with the research methods or the authors' logic, explain why.
This post is about the newspaper article, not Burgess et al.'s paper, of course. But you don't do anything to distinguish between the two, or suggest that the journalist may have misunderstood the research. Instead you imply that it's de facto sexist to say that date rape drugs aren't very widespread. What if date rape drugs just aren't that common? I can't think of any reason that piece of information should be censored. Feminists have been saying for years that rapists, NOT alcohol or other substances, are the cause of rape. And I'm sure we can all agree that many rapes take place without the presence of date rape drugs. Imagine if someone were to say "it doesn't count as real rape unless you were drugged"; we'd probably denounce that person as a rape apologist. A woman who is raped is no less a victim because she was drunk, instead of drugged. So I don't understand why you'd think it's antifeminist to claim that date rape drugs aren't common.
The paper reports the following: "During thousands of blood and alcohol tests lots of judgement-impairing compounds were discovered, but they were mostly street drugs or prescription pharmaceuticals taken by the victims themselves, and above all alcohol was the common theme." If you find a reason to question this evidence, by all means do so. But don't reject the conclusion without even asking what evidence it's based on. I would really, really like to see a higher standard of journalistic accuracy on Feministing.
Alcohol is the most common substance used to facilitate sexual assault. So that quote from the article does not do well by trying to dismiss Sexual Assault by dismissing the presence of a "date-rape drug". In other words, even if they had "just drunk excessively", or had a "bad night out" -- doesn't mean that sexual assault did not take place. Perhaps it's even more likely to have, considering the fact that alcohol is the most commom substance used to facilitate sexual assault (I know I said that already, but it's worth repeating).
I believe the bad night out is getting so trashed you go to the hospital- and evidently two months worth of spiked drug accusations at two hospitals coming to naught does show problems with alcohol consumption. It is also helpful to note its not the amount of alcohol consumed that caused the black out (not passout), its the sudden rush of alcohol that causes the short term memory to be impaired.
The article does bring up good points- Parent's difficulty in talking to your children, etc.
A quick Wikipedia read reveals that Rohypnol can be detected within 5 days in urine and a month in hair (the assertion is sourced).
A question that I have is how do authorities propagate rape prevention advice; drinking, drugs, walking alone, etc. and avoid having it dismissed as victim blaming?
"A question that I have is how do authorities propagate rape prevention advice; drinking, drugs, walking alone, etc. and avoid having it dismissed as victim blaming?"
Direct the advice at the people who do the raping.
That was more than a little moronic. You must know that there are bad people in the world. Predators that prey on the vulnerable. They will not stop cause you told them to. Get off your fluffy cloud and come down to the real world.
I think alixana was just emphasizing that not enough focus is put on the rapists and masculine culture. But I also agree with you; because there are bad people in the world we should know how to defend ourselves-just without the victim blaming.
....but then again I cant speak for alizana, she may have meant exactly as she wrote, and maybe she really did mean, literally, that she doesnt want to teach any ways of defending yourself?
Okay, let's just keep up with the same old, same old "Don't walk alone at night, don't accept open drinks, don't wear short skirts." 'Cause that's really working. Forget educating men about rape culture and how the absense of 'no' is not a 'yes' and enthusiastic consent and all that.
I would argue that telling men not men not to rape hasn't worked either. As redunukulious as that sounds, I would be a high five to 30 kicks in the gonads that every man who rapes (stranger, date, passout) knows what they are doing is wrong/ilegal. Even if its 'Grey' and the other person was conscious, there was thought that she didn't say no, SO I MUST BE GOOD, she wont tell, I'm entitled, whatever it is exactly rapists think. At the bare minimum they know they are talking advantage of somebody and know it. And while we may banter around witty rhetoric like
"Direct the advice at the people who do the raping."
there still remains the fact predators are out there that will rape, and the drunker the better.
Let me put it this way. When I was in Iraq there were a lot of road side bombs. A LOT. As the car in front of me drives over a land mine and the convoy stops. Explosive ordinance disposal was like hey, you just drove past one too, ya got lucky. Road side bombs are going to happen. I armored my vehicle and my person. My advice is wear your armor. Its not your fault, but its dangerous out there.
Personally, I think if people would rather focus on making sure that women keep themselves from getting raped through tactics that are most effective against stranger rapes (even though you are far more likely to get raped by someone you know) then perhaps they are living on some fluffy cloud.
Also, define "bad". When sexual assault and rape are normalized especially for women who are blamed for putting themselves in danger, are the rapists really deemed as bad people by society? I would say especially when a woman's rape story does not closely fit the "perfect" rape narrative she is the one who is often demonized.
"A question that I have is how do authorities propagate rape prevention advice; drinking, drugs, walking alone, etc. and avoid having it dismissed as victim blaming?"
Advise women to take a women's self-defense class (or a couple), so they can learn to be assertive or fight back in dangerous situations. Better yet, make such classes common and easy to find in every town and city. Most women have already heard all the "advice" they can stand about drinking, drugs, walking alone, and not trusting men. What women need is not more advice, but skills to cope if they *do* run into a man with bad intentions.
GhB is gone in hours. It gives the appearance of being intoxicated, which plays right into the hands of the attacker because nobody believes the victim.
BTDT.
Now what I want to know is, hasn't "spiked" long been used to refer to any drink that contains anything not specifically ordered? Yes, young women have gotten the message to watch their glasses, and in bars that may be a good idea. But alcohol is the rapists' drug of choice and long has been. Long before the current crop it was a simple matter to fix a female at a frat party a juice-based drink that contained lethal amounts of grain alcohol. Who's going to believe her when she says she didn't drink that much? No one.
Sometimes women do choose to drink excessively. And if a rapist is nearby, he'll take advantage of that. But women can also choose to drink moderately, and be sabotaged by a rapist who is trying to make them drunk. It's not as if Rohypnol is the only option available to subdue a potential victim.
Let take a stab at accurate reporting:
Word, and then some!!!!!!!!!!
This should be on a poster everywhere.
Is there a consensus opinion on the dividing line between intoxication and incapacitation?
Since alcoholic beverages are often consumed prior to both consensual sex & sexual assault it seems like the real question is where the dividing line between intoxication & incapacitation lies. I mean there are obvious boundaries, eg someone is passed out, but short of that obvious one I'd be interested in where others think the dividing line is.
And in the context or rape, how is this relevant? I think you are missing the point. It is the rapist that is the reason people are raped, not the amount of alcohol drunk.
It is the rapist that is the reason people are raped, not the amount of alcohol drunk.
In certain context the amount of alcohol consumed influences who will be assaulted.
Sexual predators are just like any other predator... most go after the easiest target to victimize, and alcohol consumptions increases the ease to assault someone.
So, while the rapist is the reason someone gets raped, it is not as if they were completely random in choosing who they are going to assault.
Most likely they will pick the target that has the least capability to resist, and with the case of alcohol, may not even remember the assault occurring.
"I think you are missing the point."
It was an open ended question, how can I be missing the point??? I'm not talking violent rape, or stranger rape, I'm talking about date rape here.
A lot of rape victims were taken advantage of when, like myself, they were too intoxicated to fully be aware of what was going on. But I was not passed out in any way, shape or form. So the question is where the dividing line is.
Yes, it's a terrible narrative and an even worse headline. But are you really sure they're equating "a bad night out" with sexual assault? I've frequently heard women I know blame a bad hang-over the day after a night out on "someone must have given me something," and when I was an RA and had to take people to the hospital to get their stomachs pumped, it was also something I heard a lot (from people who were not assault victims but just very, very drunk).
I find the whole "don't drink because you might get raped," strategy disgusting. But, I do think that there is sometimes a lack of understanding among some young women about the more general dangers of really excessive drinking, such as alcohol poisoning, which can be fatal, and the fact that some people tend to blame blackouts or vomiting on "someone must have given me something" may actually prevent some people to recognize drinking patterns that are harmful in and of themselves. If you drink enough to blackout or vomit, that's a problem, even if everyone around you handles the situation with complete morality and respect for you and ensures that no other harm come to you.
It's hard to tell if the article is equating "a bad night out" with sexual assault or not. If it was merely referring to getting really trashed and having a terrible hangover, it seems odd that they'd mix that in with information about "date rape drugs" and sexual assault without very clearly differentiating between bad hangovers and being assaulted. It's sloppy writing, I can't tell if they're denying the victims were assaulted, calling assault "a bad night out" or just mushing two topics together with no transitions or clarity.
I think the implication's there's no victim or assault or attempted assault.
Someone's out with the girls and gets totally drunk - they're not assaulted, after all they're with friends - but they put it down to being spiked and only having a close get away thanks to their friends being around. The friends congratulate themselves on watching their mates back and pass the word around warning about spiking. The next time someone gets plastered she remembers all the stories about spiking when thinking about attributing it to alcohol vs. getting spiked...
That's said thinking you've narrowly escaped being assaulted has got to really shake you up, whatever the facts are.
That just pissed me off.
I was raped by three men who took turns on me thanks to a spiked drink. I was aware and conscious but I couldn't move or yell. It was not 'a bad night out' - it was my WORST night ever.
I'm so sorry this happened to you.
I'm sorry too.
While I'm not denying that drink spiking and sexual assault happens, this is a British article. The British culture of binge drinking (which is a phrase I hate but it fits) sees people throw so much booze down their necks they end up paralytic no matter what they've been drinking, and a lot of the time people will claim they've been spiked.
I live in a city which is famous for it's pubs, bars and clubs, and people come here from all over the country just to get hammered. I've seen the effects of drinking too much too fast, or just from people not being used to drinking that much alcohol so quickly. There are a lot of dodgy folk around so spiking does happen, but a lot of cases are just from people who have underestimated just what alcohol can do to you, especially given the amount of happy hour or free drinks promotions around here. This is information coming from local hospitals and police. This is also a city with a huge student population, many of whom are away from home for the first time - Fresher's Week is insane and the bars lure them in with cheap drink and special offers.
To me the article isn't belittling date rape or blaming the victim, but commenting on a very British phenomenon - we like a drink, but a lot of people take it too far and don't realise how powerful alcohol can be. Date rape is bad, but I reckon if there were stricter controls on bars (stop selling 2-for-1 shots, get rid of the awful "dentist's chair" and stop encouraging damaging behaviour) the real victims will be more easily identified and helped.
I think the assumption underlying the article is that it's always rape when someone secretly drugs a woman and then has sex with her, but it's not always rape when the woman voluntarily drugs herself.
Nobody drugs themselves with the hope of getting raped. So what now? Should women not be allowed to drink? I should be able to go to a bar and not worry about being sexually assulted. This is not the victims fault. I have yet to meet one rape victim who wanted that. Taking advatage of people doesn't lessen the crime.
Hmm, I don't think my point was entirely clear, so let me try again:
If a person is secretly drugged as a prelude to sex, it's automatically rape. However, if a person voluntarily drinks or does drugs and then willingly agrees to have sex, it's only rape if they were so impaired that their agreement can't be considered morally/legally valid consent.
In short, with involuntary intoxication, the level of impairment is irrelevant, but with voluntary intoxication, the level of impairment is a key question in determining whether it was rape.
That, I think, is the assumption the article is making.
When drugged you can't consent to sex. Period. And sometimes the side effects of certain drugs can impair one's thinking. So if someone is clearly impaired because they are taking these drugs and then they have sex with someone taking advatage of them I classify that as rape as well.
R. Dave it is always rape if a woman drugs herself. She cannot give consent if she is heavily intoxicated or drugged even if she voluntarily drank all that alcohol or took drugs.
I was not drugged when I was raped. I had been drinking and somebody took advantage of that and raped me. Just because he did not drug my drink did make what he did any less wrong or any more my fault.
The problem is a lot of you are more focused on the victim’s consent rather than the perpetrator’s forcible conduct. My rapist's behavior was predatory and wrong.
I really wish we talked less to women about "rape prevention" and more to men about rape prevention.
It's like only talking about how to avoid getting sick instead of looking for a cure.
Wow this makes me pretty angry. I know people who have been date raped. Even if not all assults are caused by this publishing something like this is very harmful. I already have enough to worry about as far as being careful about drinking. Now if something happens because someone spiked my drink it's my fault? I don't think so. Just like when they ask a girl if she's a virgin and about her sex life after she was raped in order to make her look like she's a "slut" and "asking for it." Then they wonder why only %50 rape cases even get reported. And taking advantage of someone who is drunk is still considered harrassment. Besides that there is evidence that this occures. There are hundreds of date rape drugs.
What? Even if date rape drugs aren't as common as most people think, it's "harmful" to say so? That's what you seem to be implying when you say "publishing something like this is very harmful." I don't believe publishing the results of scientific/sociological research is likely to be harmful, even if it turns out to be incorrect. If there are problems with Burgess et al.'s research, I'm sure there are hundreds of other sociologists out there eager to make a name for themselves by refuting them. That's how human knowledge gets increased. It would be more "harmful" if researchers never questioned conventional wisdom for fear of offending someone.
"Now if something happens because someone spiked my drink it's my fault? I don't think so." Reporting that drink spiking isn't common =/= telling you it's your fault if it *does* happen. They reported that rape victims were far more likely to have alcohol than roofies in their blood. Being drunk doesn't make it your "fault" if someone rapes you.
This makes me angry too. When a friend and I were drugged, the owners of the resort and the local police did everything in their power to insure that we did not get to a hospital in time to be tested before the drugs left our system because they didn't want to harm tourism in our area. We were held in a room and questioned for hours and informed it was 'up to our discretion' whether we went to a hospital or not.
We later found out the police had hosted a dating violence seminar in that very resort only a month previous, so there is no doubt they were aware of what the proper procedure was.
Only a week previous I had ingested 3 drinks before dinner on an empty stomach without problem, yet I was informed I had simply overindulged on a single mai tai at the resort bar and didn't know my limits. As a former bartender I find this laughable. No single drink has ever made my legs rubbery, my lips unable to form words, or caused me to become violently ill and pass out for several hours.
We were later threatened by the resort's legal department as if we were the ones who had done something wrong, when we were the victims. It took me 2 days of calling rape crisis centers on other islands to find out what should have been done to test for GHP or rohypnol and that we should not have even spoken to their people.
This can and does happen to women, I'd bet more often than people think.
According to The Encarta Dictionary, an urban legend is “a bizarre untrue story that circulates in a society through being presented as something that actually happened.” We’ve all heard the one about the “Hook Man Killer” who comes across an isolated couple fooling around in their car at Lovers’ Lane, or the one about the babysitter who keeps getting prank calls from…wait for it…inside the house. Dun, dun, dunnnnnnn!
Most urban legends are silly campfire horror stories, based on zero factual evidence, intended to shock and entertain us. So to call date-rape drink spiking an urban legend is to deny the harsh reality that it occurs, brush it aside as a campfire tale, and point the blame at women for being overly and illogically paranoid about being raped.
It’s one thing to suggest that women who have nasty hangovers following a night of drinking might wrongly assume that their severe hangover was the result of a possible drink spiking, but it’s utterly outrageous to state that spiking drinks with a date-rape drug is a completely fictitious occurrence. It’s not.
Perhaps the heightened awareness women have about the date-rape drug has reduced the actual occurrences, but that doesn’t mean they never happen.
Date-rape drink spiking is not an urban legend and it is incredibly offensive to suggest otherwise.
According to The Encarta Dictionary, an urban legend is “a bizarre untrue story that circulates in a society through being presented as something that actually happened.” We’ve all heard the one about the “Hook Man Killer” who comes across an isolated couple fooling around in their car at Lovers’ Lane, or the one about the babysitter who keeps getting prank calls from…wait for it…inside the house. Dun, dun, dunnnnnnn!
Most urban legends are silly campfire horror stories, based on zero factual evidence, intended to shock and entertain us. With that in mind, I don't care how uncommon date-rape drink spiking is, drink spiking has indeed been used in cases of sexual assault.
To call date-rape drink spiking an urban legend is to deny the harsh reality that it occurs, brush it aside as a campfire tale, and point the blame at women for being overly and illogically paranoid about being drugged and raped.
Perhaps the heightened awareness women have about the date-rape drug has reduced the actual occurrences, but that doesn’t mean they never happen.
Date-rape drink spiking is not an urban legend and it is incredibly offensive to suggest otherwise.
I'm also really confused here. The doctor in the study, when he refers to "drink spiking urban legend" is refer to it's prevalence. That is to say, he believes that the actual rate is much lower than reported, that in fact it is the rate which is largely fictionalized. No one seems to have brought any information to contest that claim.
He never said that it doesn't happen, and that seems to be what people think?
What data do we have about how often this happens? I'd love to see it. It's important to know the truth about rape, with evidence to back it up so we can know where to focus our efforts to stop it. If drink spiking is a limited occurrence, then I want to know it so that my effort can be spent reducing more rapes than would be reduced if I spent my time focusing on it.