“Bill drugged me last night, and then had sex with me,” Sandy confided. “I just don’t understand it. It’s not like I would have said no to anything.”
He had given her two pills and said, “These will relax you.” She trusted him and swallowed them. She figured they were vitamins or herbal medicine. They did not relax her; they flat-out knocked her unconscious.
“He didn’t need to do it,” she repeated. “I just don’t understand why.”
Did it turn him on to see a woman “out cold” or was this all a mistake? Maybe Sandy’s body had reacted to the pills in a bizarre and unexpected way. I was willing to give Bill the benefit of the doubt, although Sandy felt his actions were intentional.
She did not view the encounter as rape, because she was already in an intimate relationship with him. I likewise did not categorize it as a sex crime, because it was Sandy’s experience, and she had a right to define it any way she wished. I was only the bystander, the friend, the shoulder to cry on. Of course, now that I am older, I look back and realize that when a woman is unconscious, she cannot ever consent.
Sandy had no idea what happened to her that night. She knew it involved sex; she could tell by the way her body felt afterward. It never occurred to either of us that Bill might be drugging other women. We both assumed the encounter was a “one-off.” After all, Bill was charming, intelligent, attractive and famous. He did not need to sedate women in order to secure dates. He could not possibly have a dark side.
