Teen Girls Often Won’t Report ‘Drug Rapes’

Regarding your coverage of the Orange County gang-rape trial: I am a registered nurse working in outpatient care in Orange County, and we see a lot of teen patients, including teenage girls who come to us for help with the same story. Often she comes in still unclear about what happened, remembers drinking something (often what she thought was water) that made her “very drunk, different than she ever felt before” or unconscious. She is unable to remember much after that but woke up feeling “sore down there.”

She often knows the guys involved. She is embarrassed about putting herself in such a vulnerable position and about other reckless choices she’d made to get there. Above all, she doesn’t want her parents to know and is horrified at the idea of reporting it. As mandated reporters of sexual assault, we do notify the police, but most often too much time has passed to collect evidence and the girl is so uncertain and unwilling to get anyone in trouble that the boys get away with it. Over and over again.

Susan Wong

Orange