I've been stewing on the 'was HG drugged or not' question for sometime. I'm from New Orleans and all opinions aside, people start drinking much younger here than in other areas of the country and even the state. Legality of the issue aside, by 18, going to bars and going out and having a few drinks over the course of the night on a weekend was not that big of a deal for me when i got to college and was living on my own. Sure there were bars and house parties that got busted for underage drinking- even here, but we still got away with a lot when it came to "partying." So I went to LSU which is roughly an hour away from New Orleans and many other kids from New Orleans went there as well. I could always sp I think the difference between the underage kids from NOLA be underage kids from other areas of Louisiana and the country because the NOLA kids (not all of them but many of them) were a little more seasoned. We didn't tend to get quite as drunk at any opportunity and we had made mistakes in the past or seen friends who had been impacted by decisions made when drinking and we tended to show a bit more caution. Not because we were in any way superior but because we had learned the harsh lessons now being learned by others while we were in High school. This isn't a passing of judgement on Hannahor.other similar victims Iit's simply my insight as to the issue of why she may have gotten into a vehicle with JLM. Hannah was not even 17 when she first arrived at UVA and only 18 when she was robbed of her innocence and her life. She may not have really ventured into the party world many first experience in college for a long enough period to realize that we must question the motives of strangers and sadly even acquit ancestors and friends, that we should constantly survey our surroundings, that we must not let our guard down even in moments of intoxication though admittedly that is a difficult thing to stick to when drinking at a young age. So, I am not saying she wasn't drugged and I'm not saying she was drugged but either way, she had probably not had previous experiences that led her to be suspicious of JLMs "act" of good will. She may have been on the cusp of inebriated where she had been drinking hard liquor and the beer he purchased in combination with the hard liquor she had been drinking brought on the effects of the "mixing different types of alcohol" rendering her less cautious. She probably realized it wasn't ideal but the effects of her drinking probably had her in the "this is an innocent situation" "he seems like a trustworthy guy who will get me where I need to go" kind of mindset. I found that during my early college years, I still had friends who would let their guards down and make decisions after heavy drinking that they would NEVER have fathomed themselves making when they were sober. Sometimes they lucked out and were unharmed or were stopped by another friend who had a little more of their "wits" about them, but in general, alcohol lowers people's inhibitions and it does so at a rate that increases with the more someone consumes and with the less someone has experience with consuming. So compounded with the fact HG may not have ever had a scary/"too close to home" experience in the past to inspire her to be more suspicious of everyone and everything around her, it's very plausible that she did leave willingly with JLM under the impression that he was just a friendly guy offering her a solution to the fact that she was stranded far from home (regardless of what solution he offered whether it was a ride to her apartment, to the party she last texted about or to his place for her to "sober up") and under the influence she didn't refuse his.offer. DISCLAIMER: I am in no way blaming HG and in no way excusing JM. I am simply trying to shed light on how this may have been played out based on personal experiences in the past and my feelings that sometimes enough alcohol can lead even the smartest and brightest people to believe a decision is a good one when they may never have had that belief in a less intoxicated state. It's a sick world we live in where someone so much older and larger would take advantage of an innocent (possibly.naive and rightfully so at only 18 yrs old) girl not even half his size. Especially when he would likely have been horrified had his sister suffered atrocities similar to those he committed against other young women,
