Are you lucky enough to have the Legal system help you?

                     Are you lucky enough to have the Legal system help you?


Partying in college is inevitable. Hooking up in college is also close to inevitable. What’s even more inevitable is getting roofied at a party or a bar. This can be very scary and most definitely will not raise your confidence. The legal system continues to fail victims of drugged sexual assault every day.

According to the Argus Leader, pressing charges against someone for drugging you is very difficult. More often than not the police are unable to help you the day after being drugged. Even if it is proven that you were roofied it is close to impossible to provide enough evidence to fight against the person who roofied you. With a simple, “I didn’t do it” The date rape drugger will easily get away with what they did. The date rape drug testing system is severely faulty. 

Imagine going through a traumatic event and then you are unable to receive justice! Sounds like the best country in the World isn’t so great. Buzzfeed news states that “The testing equipment in some labs isn’t sensitive enough to detect substances at low concentrations...it may be hours or even days before the victim has recovered sufficiently to report an assault. Other labs test only blood, even though evidence of drugs last much longer in urine, or don’t have the resources to test sexual assault cases at all” (Adams).  Scientists who are supposed to be the best at their craft are not even able to provide effective testing. That sounds insane to me! You put so much trust into the system and they continue to fail you over and over again. 

Even if you get the confidence to go get tested after having a traumatic night, a “false negative” test provided by the hospital can cause a quick end to your investigation. You can say bye-bye to ever receiving justice. How are you supposed to just continue living your life after everything you went through? From being drugged and sexually preyed upon, to getting tested in a scary hospital, only for your case to be dropped. That is a very pathetic representation of our legal system. It is hard to tell if someone was truly not drugged or if the errors in the testing caused the test to come up as negative. Most sexual assault cases involving negative date rape drug tests do not make it to court. Even if they do, having the victims' test come up as a negative makes the jury believe that they are just a liar begging for attention. 

This may come as a shocker, but alcohol is the most common “date rape drug” used by predators. Alcohol is a social thing that is willingly drank by many people. How are you supposed to prove that someone forced you to drink it? Or that someone took advantage of you while drinking? Yet again the legal system fails its victims. Not to mention, did you hear about the new Minnesota law that if alcohol is involved in sexual assault then it is provided as consent? That is insane, to say the least, but that is a topic for another day.

Lastly, sexual assault involving date rape drugs is very understudied. There is not a lot of research done on them which makes it difficult for us to provide information on how common these are and how common it is for someone to get justice. It is stated that “In 2005 a Department of Justice funded study found that of about 144 participants who reported a sexual assault, around 4% had been drugged surreptitiously. When including people who had consumed drugs or alcohol willingly, the study found that 35% of the reported cases qualified as drug-facilitated” (Weiss). These extremely low numbers show that most of the time seeking help from authorities does not end up working out in your favor. If only 4% of people were drugged surreptitiously then how come the 96% of people who were obviously drugged weren’t provided justice? It amazes me that these things go unnoticed.  

All in all, the legal system and drug testing process continue to fail victims of roofied sexual assault every day. You would think that in 2021 they would have overcome and fixed this flawed system. However, still continuing to make no changes really shows where their priorities lie. It is sad that the world has come to this and having your own body be violated isn’t taken seriously. So I will continue to say that the legal system continues to fail victims of drugged sexual assault every day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Educating Yourself on the Path to Fight Racial Discrimination

Image
Educating Yourself on the Path to Fight Racial Discrimination Throughout the past year, countless incidents have rightfully amplified tensions throughout our country. In the path to fight racial discrimination, we must first educate ourselves. By Jayme Baker Over a century ago, slavery was abolished within the United States. It is now 2021, 155 years later, and the events of racial discrimination have yet to meet their end. This past year has no doubt been a turning point in the fight against racial discrimination.  According to the Pew Research Center roughly 71% of black Americans and 52% of Hispanics surveyed reported that they have been personally discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity. Similarly, 4 in 10 black Americans and 5 in 10 Hispanics claim that their race or ethnicity has ultimately made their life harder in one way or another. These statistics are very disheartening because they show just how common racial and ethnic discrimination is throughout the...
Read more

Positive Mental Health Environments In Primary Classrooms for LBGTQIA+ Youth

Image
Creating Safe Spaces In Primary Classrooms For LBGTQIA+ Youth Mental Health By: Mikayla Becker, April 28 2021                                        Child holding their hand up in an LBGTQIA+ inclusive classroom Primary classrooms should be safe spaces for LBGTQIA+ youth mental health with the use of different strategies.  Although we have made major progress in civil rights and societal acceptance for the LBGTQIA+ community, the youth of the LBGTQIA+ community are still being ignored.  Children can identify themselves as members of this community as young as 9 . For children this young, this process is difficult and takes a toll on their mental health state. I officially identified as bisexual in June of 2018 but that was not the beginning. I vividly remember having the feeling of butterflies in my stomach when I looked at both boys and girls in third g...
Read more

Racial Injustice Ends Now

  Blog Post                                                                 Racial Injustice Ends Now   The world today is a world divided for many reasons such as politics, sports teams,  and  re ligion ,  a ll things chosen based on opinions . W hat people should not be divided on  are  things out of our hands like the color of our skin.   There is so much hate and injustice over  civil rights for people who are  all  of  equal  value. Communities are crumbling and burning from silenced voices and it needs to be changed.   Racial injustice is the largest issue in our world today . I n unity  people should be working to fix this problem by spreading awareness and  protesting ...
Read more