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My son attends a public middle school in New Jersey. He told me that two boys that ride the bus said they enjoy putting roofies in people's drinks at parties. This disturbed me very much and I reported it to the school because they have quite a bit of parties there. Upon mentioning this to my husband, he bawls me out!! ! He said that I'm a trouble maker and that I should have never reported this to the school! Now, who's nuts here? Him or me? Now I should let an unsuspecting parent's daughter get micky finned at the next dance the school has? Is this sort of attitude an aspie thing?! Right now, I feel like throwing my husband out of the house.

Ummm....

I think I may have reported something like that to the school AND the police. No. There is nothing wrong with you telling the school. I mean, it is possible that they are just talking big to try to "impress" each other, but if they are telling the truth, someone needs to step in and do something PRONTO.

Holy cow.

I hate that my son is in middle school. He still calls me "Mommy." To think he shares space with kids who even know what roofies are scares the crap out of me.

But, no, I don't think that sort of attitude is an aspie thing. I think it is a stupid thing. (edited to add: if you mean sitting by and doing nothing...if you mean saying something, my answer is still no. It's not an aspie thing. It's a responsible thing.)

Personally, I think your husband is correct, you sort of overstepped your bounds.

Two kids were probably joking around. You should have asked for elaboration from your son before jumping to conclusions. Now these two teenagers might go through hell because of a joke and some meddling busy body.

You did the rights thing. I live in a community of about 40,000 people and we have recently had a real problem with sexual assaults. At least one of the incidents that has been highly publicized (because some members of the university football team were allegedly involved) have involved roofies slipped into a couple of young women's drinks. The young women involved have been traumatized, the young men are facing serious felony charges and may do jail time. If any of the stories that have come out have a grain of truth, there were people who knew that the girls' drinks had been spiked and did nothing. Other cases have involved folks who just had too much to drink, there has been some innuendo that in at least one case there was purposeful effort made to get a young woman drunk. Again, it appears that others knew what was going on to some extent and did nothing. These are just two instances out of several that have occurred over the past 2 years in this small college town. The community is reeling. A big effort is being made to educate people and one of the main messages that is being conveyed is that the "bystanders" play an important part in preventing these crimes. If it has come to your attention that these boys are talking about drugging their school mates you have an obligation to say something in my opinion. Slipping a girl a roofie is often a prelude to taking advantage of her. The damage that could be done to these young lives if something like that were to occur is immeasurable. How would you feel if you DIDN'T say anything and the boys followed through on their talk and someone got hurt?

I disagree with again_with_this. If the kids were just joking around then they won't get in trouble if there is no evidence against them. No one is going to put them through "hell" based on one comment. On the other hand, if they were planning to do something and an authority figure questions them about it, perhaps they will be deterred from doing something so foolish.

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now!

again_with_this's point deserves some consideration.
I can think of several ways that school authorities might misuse the information and/or overreact:
zealous 'witch-hunts', intrusive locker checks, overly severe penalties without evidence, etc.

That being said, which is really more important? Getting the word out so that, hopefully,
the party-going kids will be more on guard against those pranks, and any would-be pranksters are deterred,
or protecting the reputations of kids who shouldn't say such stupid things in the first place, whether or not it's true?
I'm glad RightGalaxy reported it. I probably would have done the same.

Slipping roofies in drinks IS dangerous, for all the reasons Bombaloo mentioned and more.
Suppose a victim who gets slipped one tries to ride their bike back after finishing their drink?
Suppose a pedestrian passes out while trying to cross the street?
etc etc.

Last edited by Fatal-Noogie on 14 Oct 2012, 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Spiking peoples drinks is jail time here, and could also get the person unwittingly harmed or killed, so your husband is either an idiot, or he misunderstood something.

You did the right thing absolutely. again_with_this is wrong, if it turns out to have been a joke then no-one is suffering unduly, however, the victim of the roofie is likely to end up scarred for life. Even 'joking' about it shows very poor taste and lack of respect for females, and it doesn't sound like it was a joke to me. Innocent people have nothing to fear, and it's far better to protect people than do nothing.

Who was it that said something like "for evil to win, all it takes is for good men to do nothing." They were right.

Well done for taking it seriously, and your husband needs a reality check fast.

The underage drinking itself is a problem already.

Thank you.



No one will suffer unduly? You hear stories about elementary school kids getting arrested by police for playing cowboys and Indians. With all of this paranoia, which you yourself so greatly exemplify, I can see two boys kidding around getting into a heap of trouble. I can see other paranoid types going nuts. I can see the dances being canceled altogether, and it's not out of the bounds of reality by any means.

Besides, the parties are held at the school. If these kids are really putting roofies in drinks, you're telling me that no chaperon would have noticed?

If the school overreacts, that's the school's fault, not RightGalaxy's.
I understand the no-snitching argument in cases where the a mechanized
bureaucracy produces only unjust outcomes that crush personal freedoms.
But consider:
1. The alleged crime of sneaking roofies isn't about personal freedom - that's about hurting people.
2. We don't know how the school will react, so we can't blame RightGalaxy by assuming an injustice will happen as a consequence.
3. RightGalaxy isn't the one with a talking problem. It's not like she received that info confidentially. Those kids shouldn't be bragging (facetiously or truthfully) on a bus like that. If it wasn't RightGalaxy it might as well be someone else forwarding the info.

If the parties are anything like I remember,
with deafening non-stop music, dim ambient light, bright flashing lights,
and crowds of students packed shoulder to shoulder moving in and out past each other,
then yes, actually, a lot of things can go unnoticed.
(Not noticing something is neither proof that it happened nor proof that it didn't happen.)

It's a he-said-she-said incident. She got it from her son, who heard it on a bus, not much more detail. You say the kids were bragging, I think there isn't enough info.

More importantly, if these kids get reprimanded over a joke, they may seek vengeance on the kid who overheard them and tattled.

These things should be taken into consideration before jumping to a conclusion. And it seems most people here are applauding the witch-hunt mentality. While sexual assaults are very serious, it seems the paranoia and quickness to assume the worst are evident of an even more pervasive problem in our society. I understand the husband for feeling upset about this.

Couldn't she at least have asked for more info from her son, or talked it over with her husband?

[edit, I used the verb 'assume' to mean essentially 'jump to conclusions']

Granted, I made some assumptions in that exert. I shouldn't have said "bragging".

Telling the school about it, however, doesn't need to rely on assumptions.
If RightGalaxy had said "[student one] and [student two] put roofies in other people's drinks", THAT would be jumping to conclusions. Reporting that her son told her that some students had said that they put roofies in other people's drinks: is less assumption-based. I don't know which method she used. I still maintain that she's not responsible if the administrators misinterpret that information and make their own assumptions. (Of course my saying any of this on the thread assumes RightGalaxies account is in some way accurate, but if it's not, then everything we said here is irrelevant and harmless anyway.)

Speaking of conclusions, we still don't even know whether she even mentioned the kids' names. (I hope not.)
She didn't even say whether her son told her names.

You know where I stand on all this, so I'm going to wait it out until more info comes our way.

Rather a locker check than an innocent victim suffers. And I think you need to contemplate on the actual meaning of the word suffer. You can't compare someone being raped after having pills put in their drink with someone getting their locker checked, or questioned, or even reprimanded. I'd rather a cancelled party than one of my daughters went through something awful from someone doing something like that. Clearly you don't have daughters. And let's not forget it can also happen to guys. I wholeheartedly agree with Fatal_Noogie, at dimly lit parties full of bouncing teenagers plenty can happen unnoticed, and I can't believe you think otherwise. This is not paranoia, it's reality. "You hear stories..." is a pretty paranoid stance in itself. I'd rather be a thought of as a paranoid parent than be the parent of a child whose life is ruined through the actions of such people. So if two boys do get reprimanded, might that teach them a lesson not to loudly talk about their criminal behaviour in a public place (although in this case it is probably better that they did) and to make them rethink their intentions before innocent people suffer (or going by their reported words more innocent people suffer.)

I doubt they would have them at school, so a locker search wouldn't do any good. I would tell the school though. Tell them to keep your childs name out of it. The principal can call the parents and they can sit the boys down and say that someone overheard them talking about it. Then the parents can take it fom there. It would really be up to their parents to put a stop to it by not only searching their rooms before the boys find out they have been busted but also by not letting the go to any more parties.

Of course they could have just been making it up to sound "big" or something. I would imagine that there would have been reports of incidents if they had actually done that. Also, while everybody has heard of roofies, there are also lots of urban legends that say putting aspirin in a drink will drug somebody etc. The kids may have done something like that and thought it was comparable to roofies, but that could still be risky if the kids allergic to aspirin.

Tell the school and then let them handle it from there.

Public schools are rotten as hell, completely utterly rotten, and it's a huge scam because if you take a GED, it's as hard as a 7th or 8th grade standardized test. Pull your kids out and keep them from being corrupted.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeSJ9loxFgI[/youtube]

Their criminal behavior?

Do you see what you've done? Your mind is already made up. You're speaking about it as if it's certainly real.

You do hear stories, and you are paranoid.