In Defense of Vulnerable Women and Honorable Men

Today's letter is one about a heavy topic. However, it needs to be said in order to take a stand for the countless women who are blamed for the things that happen to them and get judged for the way the behave in the aftermath of terrible events. 

***Trigger warning: this article is about sexual trauma.***

For the past two weeks I’ve been sitting with the Cornell 7 case, feeling compelled to say something about it. I have a sense of obligation to participate in this conversation for two very important reasons. 

Reason #1: I’m a mental health counselor, and one of my specialties is sexual trauma. I run a regular group for women who have experienced sexual violence of any kind.

Reason #2: It happened to me. In college. I was intoxicated. I was Jane Doe. 

As more information comes out in the media about how Jane Doe described the encounter, what she texted the day after it happened, and the reports that “her story changed,” I feel compelled to contribute some perspective.

Both as a licensed clinician who has had to study the neurobiology of trauma, and as a woman who lived the experience of being “date raped” in college, I’m in a position to say a thing or two about what happens to a young woman who lives through a situation like that. 

#1 Intoxication and consent

An intoxicated person can seem like she’s up for it. Intoxication does not equal consent. 

In fact, an intoxicated person is not actually capable of giving consent. Using the Wildmark formula for blood alcohol content, a woman of my size (5’2” weighing 115 lbs in college) only needs TWO standard drinks consumed over a period of 2-3 hours to reach a level of impairment where disinhibition sets in and judgment is reduced. (That’s a BAC of 0.06%) 

It takes THREE drinks to get a more average sized young woman weighing 150 lbs to that same level of intoxication. If you then buy that woman a bonus 2 shots of tequila in between her “chaser” beers, you now have someone at 0.13% BAC, which means she believes she’s doing better than she is but her judgment and assessment of risk are seriously impaired. 

Think about it. The average woman who seems to be having a good time after a handful of drinks is already significantly impaired. She thinks she’s having fun but things are already a little fuzzy. It’s going to take her another 10 hours to detox the alcohol out of her system.

The night I was raped in the Venezuelan plains, Los Llanos, I had consumed half a bottle of whiskey all by myself. We were singing songs and having a lovely time. The next thing I knew, the guy I had a crush on (the popular guy who everyone liked) was taking me by the hand and loading me into a truck, away from the group and the singing.

I was docile. I was in a seemingly happy place. I was trusting. I was not thinking. I was drunk.

Drunk and easy going does not equal consent.

By the time I was laying on the dirt in the middle of god-knows-where, I knew what was going to happen but I had no will or strength. I knew it would be over quickly and I left my body. 

The Wildmark formula says I was probably at about 0.28% BAC, which is serious impairment. In this state, people experience loss of motor control, inability to walk safely, slurred speech, complete mental confusion, total masking of pain, vomiting, drowsiness, and entering blackout territory. 

I did not say no. 

All reports state that Jane Doe arrived at the frat house already intoxicated, at which point she was offered ketamine.

#2 Ketamine 

Ketamine is not alcohol. It’s a dissociative anesthetic drug. This means it makes you feel disconnected from your body and disconnected from reality. It’s the anesthesia they use when they have to perform brain surgery on patients that need to be awake for it. 

Take that in for a moment. This is the drug surgeons give people so they can be totally chill and non-feeling while brain surgery is performed on them. When under the effects of ketamine, nothing feels like a big deal.

Not only was Jane Doe drunk and impaired when she got to the frat house, the minute she took ketamine she thought she was game for anything. Then they gave her more ketamine while the “shop was open” (as the crude texts by the frat brothers stated.)

What you have is woman who at times might look semi conscious and semi willing. She’s under f***ing ketamine! You can offer to perform brain surgery on her and she might giggle and say, sure! 

#3 The next-day friendliness

When I woke up the day after being assaulted, I was mortified that our friends had seen us leave in the truck. I was seriously hungover and felt dreadful.

Our hosts were a lovely couple in their early thirties with two small kids. While we had breakfast, the husband started hammering on Mr. cool guy for thinking he’s so macho to whisk a girl away in a truck in the middle of the night. He went on and on. I felt so ashamed; and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I stepped in and asked him to stop. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “you don’t understand, Morella. Decent men don’t do that.”

What he didn’t understand was how much I needed it to not be true. I was trying to reconcile in my mind that this guy I had a crush on must love me. If he loved me then everything would be OK. Maybe I could move on if we were happy together after that.

And that’s what a victim can often do in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event. 

There are many different trauma responses. You’ve heard of fight or flight, but those are the low-level responses to a stressful situation. When someone is immobilized (and intoxication is an immobilization), the nervous system reads the danger as life-threatening and the stress response will verge into dissociative territory: freeze and fawn. In other words, let me play dead and/or be nice to you so maybe you won’t hurt me.

In a dissociative fawn or freeze, the victim will look very agreeable. The next day, when she begins to try to process what happened, she might experience shock, denial, intense shame, and bargaining, among other things.

She can’t make sense of what happened so she needs it to be the least harmful option. If it wasn’t that bad, maybe just maybe, the awful feelings she’s experiencing will go away quickly. If she can feel that the perpetrator actually cares about her, maybe they will comfort her and make it all better. Maybe it won’t be that bad.

In the days following the gang rape, Jane Doe texted with some of the frat guys. She was trying to not feel so awful about it. If they were her friends and they cared for her, maybe she could get over it. She was bargaining with herself. She hadn’t yet processed what had actually happened. 

And then there’s the ketamine…

It takes DAYS for ketamine to leave your system. So in the days immediately following, she’s still in this dissociated state. Slowly, as the ketamine worked its way out of her body, she went from feeling like she could retain a sense of dignity by picturing herself as a willing participant, to realizing the severity of what happened and making her see that she was just a piece of meat. 

#4 A story that changes

How well do you remember the sequence of events after you’ve had too much to drink? Do things get shuffled in your brain? I bet you can admit you’d make a really poor witness if someone put you on the witness stand.

Furthermore, Bessel van der Kolk, a renown psychiatrist for his research on trauma, often states that trauma survivors make for terrible witnesses in legal proceedings because trauma fundamentally alters how the brain processes, stores, and recalls memories. 

Here’s the thing, when someone has experienced the level of traumatic event that puts them in a freeze state –again, immobilization through intoxication creates the same nervous system state, the centers of the brain that regulate communication (Broca’s area), sensory processing (thalamus,) timekeeping and logic (prefrontal cortex,) and their links to emotional processing (limbic system) basically shut down.

The person might have a hard time expressing themselves or become totally silent (Brocca’s area.) They’ll dissociate –in Jane Doe’s case ketamine was already putting her there– and feel like whatever is happening is unreal (thalamus.) They’ll experience brain fog and cognitive paralysis (prefrontal cortex.) They’ll feel emotionally numb (limbic system.)

When you then ask her to talk about it, she’ll have trouble finding the right words, she’ll have difficulty recalling a linear sequence of events, she’ll feel numb and disconnected from it. She might not seem too bothered by it. Different bits and parts of the story may come out at different times. She might tell different stories not because she’s lying but because her brain was impaired and she can’t recall events sequentially or logically.

It’s not regret.

I’ve been seeing on social media the common judgment and attitude that says something like, well she was fine with it but the next day, she started to regret it so she’s calling it rape. 

Let’s recap:

#1. Women/men who are heavily intoxicated may look willing and docile which is not the same as consenting.

#2. Women/men under the influence of ketamine are in a dissociated state and will agree to anything.

#3. Women/men who experience trauma may well minimize it at first in order to try to cope with it.

#4. Women/men who experience trauma at the hands of someone they know can often seek to maintain the connection in the hopes it will help them overcome the awful feelings more quickly. 

I’ve also seen people comment something along the lines of, women need to take responsibility for their actions.

Yes, I took responsibility for drinking a ½ bottle of whiskey by myself. But here’s the thing: you can put one hundred naked, drunk women in a room and none of them will get raped, unless you put a rapist in the room. You think you know people and you’re safe until you discover the hard way that they were not safe people.

I’d like to wrap this up with some love towards honorable men.

I have never been a man hater. I am lucky to have many honorable men in my life and the majority of men I dated were of stellar caliber. My husband is a girl-dad and he is impeccable.

Our host in Los Llanos was an honorable man. He stood up for me and shamed the one person who was deserving of it. He called out the abominable behavior in public. 

I’ve also heard stories from clients of decent young men who’ve been the type to bring a girl home when she’s intoxicated so no poor excuse for a man can harm her. 

I heard a story once of a girl who was raped on a college campus and then left to walk home alone. Another guy, a stranger, saw the state she was in and tried to get her home but she passed out. What did he do? He carried her to his apartment, put her in his bed, and slept on the couch. He then brought her breakfast and coffee the next morning.

Let’s raise our boys to be honorable men. It’s not hard.

Much love to you all,

Morella