RAISE THE ROOFIE AWARENESS

The epidemic of date rape, also called, acquaintance rate," has not disappeared from college campuses. Just ask Rel Dowdell, a young film maker from Fairmount whose Train Ride short was released in 1996. It’s a thriller about a college freshman who gets into trouble when he slips the drug Rohypnol into a female freshman’s drink at a party, leading to a gang rape. Dowdell was working on a feature-length expansion of his film when it was picked up by Sony RuffNation. Next week, the movie will be released on nationally on DVD.

"This is an epidemic and I wanted to make people aware," said the 31 year old Dowdell, who also teaches screen writing at Boston University and English at the Community College of Philadelphia. "Rohypnol leaves you completely unconscious – with no memory – and it is very hard to prove a crime."

"The public doesn’t even know the beginning of what is going on at campuses," said Larrry DeMarco, an attorney who focuses on representing plaintiffs in these cases. "The aggressors," he says, "pick freshman women out of what they call ‘the Freshman Pig Book’ and decide ahead of time who they like and then invite them to their parties and slip them the drug. And late, the women are shocked, feel shame and confusion when the realize what happened, and sadly, few of these crimes go reported." . . .

The City Paper,

March 17, 2005, #1034