A former Seal Beach chef pleaded not guilty to drugging and raping a member of the military after she dined at the restaurant where he worked last year, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office said last week in a news release.
The victim told investigators that 55-year-old Darryl Lee Matanane gave her an alcoholic beverage at Bistro Saint Germain in Seal Beach in Feb. 2018 and she later woke up at a stranger’s apartment where she had been sexually assaulted, according to the Seal Police Department.
She said had no recollection of how she got to the unfamiliar location.
Matanane has been charged with six felony counts, including one count of rape by use of drugs, one count of rape of an unconscious person, one count of sodomy of an unconscious person, one count of sodomy by anesthesia or a controlled substance, one count of sexual penetration of an unconscious victim and one count of sexual penetration by intoxicating or controlled substance.
The former chef was arrested on Aug. 30 in Midland, Texas, after being released from custody a week after his arrest in Orange County last year. At the time, he was identified as a suspect in the assault but the District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges and requested further investigation.
Matanane was extradited back to Orange County where he is being held at a jail on $1 million bail.
Alcohol has long been used to facilitate sexual assault worldwide, and there has been an increase in perpetrators also using “date rape drugs” in cases of sexual violence over recent years, according to a World Health Organization report.
In a study of 13,310 American women aged 18 to 44 years, 22% who said they had been raped reported being given a drug.
1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape, with female college students aged 18-24 being three times more likely to experience sexual violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the U.S. Department of Justice.
At the University of Southern California, 31% of female undergraduates said they were sexually assaulted sometime during their college years, according to a survey that also found that the vast majority of assaults of college students involved alcohol.
