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This article claims:

Every year, an estimated 1 million people are date raped, and many of them are victims of date-rape drugs, potent mixtures that disrupt the central nervous system.

I suspect the "article" appears to be more advertisement for the brand and company than actual article but it is being linked from The DrudgeReport today as though it were actual news.

Is the claim of 1 million date rapes backed up by any reputable studies? I am not interested so much in the definition of date rape so much as seeing that the company has done more than pulling a nice round number out of there air and using it for the claim. I am doubly dubious since the apparent reference to the claim on the article links to the home page of the company making the product.

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    What @dmckee said. This question is in strong need of definining what "date rape" is. And any answer worth its salt should really analyze how many reports are false (e.g. revenge, post-sex regrets, other reasons for false accusations).
    – user5341
    Dec 11, 2012 at 20:35
  • @DVK - I agree that it needs to be defined... I would even be ameniable to a study that took the broadest definition of the term. This seems like an example of "hey here is a nice round number we can use" to make it seem like the problem is large enough to warrant backing the development of our product to market. I smell venture capital bait all over this.
    – Chad
    Dec 11, 2012 at 21:01
  • @Chad does the article give a more precise definition? Maybe a better citation from it would help?
    – Sklivvz
    Dec 11, 2012 at 22:10
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    Alcohol is the #1 date-rape drug...
    – Sam I Am
    Dec 12, 2012 at 4:31
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    Is the figure supposed to be world-wide, or specific to a certain country? If it were for a specific country, we could work out if date rape according to this claim would account for more rape victims than there are total rape victims.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Dec 12, 2012 at 6:58

1 Answer 1

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The exact number of date rape is not known since there is fear of inflated statistics in accounting for rape numbers in USA. Also according to a 2013 global review, 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence and more often than not, cases of violence against women go unreported.

Date rape is a subset of acquaintance rape where nonconsensual sex occurs between two people who are in a romantic relationship. "Acquaintance rape also includes rapes in which the victim and perpetrator have been in a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship, for example as co-workers or neighbors. Date rape is particularly prevalent on college campuses, where it frequently occurs in situations involving alcohol or other date rape drugs, which may facilitate the execution of drug facilitated sexual assault DFSA".

Per CDC in 2010, the annual estimated number of completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 780,000 out of estimated rape victims of 1,270,000. The life time estimated number of Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 9,524,000 out of estimated rape victims of 21,840,000 in USA. About 5% of women (5.2%) experienced attempted forced penetration, and 8.0% experienced alcohol/drug-facilitated completed forced penetration. One percent, or approximately 1.3 million women, reported some type of rape victimization in the 12 months prior to taking the survey.

Per CDC in 2013, the annual estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) is not reported since relative standard error > 30%. The life time estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) per CDC 2010 is 4,098,000 out of estimated rape victims of 11,162,000. Nearly 1 in 10 women in the United States (9.4%) has been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.

However, National Crime Victimization Survey by Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 quotes a different total annual rape victims number of 96970 (students 31302 and nonstudents 65668) where completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration numbers are not exactly known since survey does not specifically ask about incidents in which the victim was unable to provide consent because of drug or alcohol consumption.

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    Thats a huge variance from 1.3 milling to less than 100k
    – Chad
    Jul 8, 2015 at 14:11
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    @Chad No surprise. There's a lot of bogus "rape" data, including survey questions rigged to produce higher numbers by including things that aren't rape. (For example, I've seen survey questions that define consenting to sex in order to keep a partner from leaving as rape.)
    – Loren Pechtel
    Jul 8, 2015 at 23:24

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