Drug-Assisted Date Rapes on Rise, Hard to Prosecute
Victims often don't recall crime details
By Onell R. Soto, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
Originally published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, June 3, 2001
The victims of drug-assisted rape don't have a chance to say no.
With an odorless, flavorless sedative secretly mixed into a drink, they lose consciousness.
A pounding headache and a sense that someone has had sex with them is all they know.
A blood test done within hours may turn up the chemical used to knock them out, but more likely it will not.
A medical exam may indicate whether they've been sexually assaulted.
From there, all the victims have are fleeting memories before the blackouts.
"Oftentimes the only behavior they can recall is very innocent," said prosecutor Richard Monroy.
"It does make prosecution that much more difficult because you have a victim who cannot recall anything after taking a drink," Monroy said.
Prosecuting such sexual assaults is a problem authorities are facing more often as the inexpensive drugs offer an easy way for sexual predators to get what they want.
"Rape statistics have been going up, not down," said District Attorney Paul Pfingst. "Most of the rapes we have are acquaintance rapes. . . . Most involved the use of drugs, including alcohol, to obvious excess."
In some cases, there is additional evidence: videotapes in one recent North County case, numerous other victims in a recent conviction in San Diego.
Yet it often is a woman's suspicion against the word of a defendant—and, sometimes, that's not enough.
The body quickly flushes out many of the so-called "date rape" drugs—including Rohypnol and Gamma Hydroxybutyrate, known as GHB—and medical findings of rough sex don't necessarily mean it was not consensual, experts say.
And sometimes, women pass out after simply drinking too much, although that doesn't make nonconsensual sex less of a crime, said Lt. Bill Edwards of the San Diego police sex crimes unit.
"To be honest with you, a lot of times it's not drugs, it's still alcohol," he said.
Walk to trouble
Last December, a woman told police she went drinking with friends in downtown Carlsbad, where a man she danced with offered her a shot of alcohol.
She said no, he persisted and eventually she agreed, according to court records.
Soon, though, she felt nauseous and said she had to go for a walk, according to the records. The man who bought her the drink said, "I'll walk with you."
That's the last thing she remembers until waking five hours later, sitting in the front seat of the man's sport utility vehicle naked from the waist down, she told police.
She asked him what happened.
"We had sex," he told her before he dropped her off at a friend's house, according to court records.
The woman didn't report the incident for two days. By then police had no hope of turning up the drug, if any, that was in the drink.
A medical exam found signs of sex, and she pointed out the man in a police photo lineup, but the case has stalled.
"It's not closed, but it's not something at this point the DA feels they can file charges on," said Carlsbad police Lt. Jim Byler.
The San Diego Union-Tribune does not identify the victims of sex crimes. The man is not being named because no charges have been filed.
An odd case
Sometimes, though, investigators have better evidence.
That was the case in August, when a woman who had met a man at a San Marcos nightclub suspected he had drugged her.
She testified at a court proceeding that she made a second date with him in an attempt to catch him, and took only small sips from the wine he gave her.
Still, she passed out, and when she awoke, he was having sex with her in front of a video camera.
She ran out of his apartment and called Oceanside police, who arrested Tareeq Elmore.
As officers walked him to a patrol car, they noticed he was walking strangely. In his shoe, they found the video he had made that evening.
In his apartment, they found videos featuring five other unconscious women, including one detectives later identified as his wife.
Elmore, 25, pleaded guilty to two sexual assaults and was sentenced in January to 16 years in prison. Detectives have not identified the other women.
Still, this former Marine Corps sergeant denied ever using drugs to knock out the women.
"In the explicit tapes the prosecution used to negotiate a settlement, the women were intoxicated by store-bought alcohol, nothing more," he said.
Numbers count
In San Diego, the evidence against Angelo Sherman, 36, centered on the number of women who told similar stories about him. Seven women testified at his trial this year, said prosecutor Tim Walsh.
They all went out with him or got together with him voluntarily, Walsh said. All drank beverages he gave them. All became unconscious. "And all of them were sexually assaulted by him."
The women, who met Sherman at bars or parties or while they shopped at one of the stores where he clerked, testified to assaults dating to 1994, Walsh said.
At his sentencing last month, Sherman scolded the women and said he did nothing wrong.
"I've never raped or date-raped anyone," he said, calling the case a "lynching."
A judge sentenced him to 125 years in prison, saying Sherman reminded him of "a shark on a feeding frenzy."
Women who meet men at bars aren't the only ones who find themselves thinking they've been sexually assaulted.
A 24-year-old worker at a business at McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad told police she went out for dinner and drinks with her boss and some co-workers, only to wake up the next morning in her boss' house with a splitting headache.
Police arrested the boss, Monte Testerman, 62, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on $100,000 bail.
Testerman's lawyer said his client has denied any wrongdoing and will be vindicated because his accuser "doesn't remember anything."
A judge is to decide next month whether there is enough evidence to warrant a trial.
Authorities say there are steps women can take to protect themselves, including not accepting drinks.
Women can also go out in groups and watch out for one another, said San Diego police sex crimes Detective Sandi Oplinger. Also, if they suspect something is wrong, it is essential to report it right away.
"Don't wait," she said. "Those first few hours, or day or day and a half, are critical to get evidence."
