A state agency set up to help crime victims urged authorities earlier this year to charge a woman who had reported she was sexually assaulted because staffers thought she was defrauding them and they were worried about their budget.
That woman ended up in court, accused of making a fraudulent claim for asking the state to pay the $750 cost of her rape kit. She even spent time in jail before prosecutors dismissed her case nine months after it was filed. Her attorney worries that prosecutions like this could have a chilling effect on victims of sexual assault.
Shortly after the case evaporated, those involved publicly pointed fingers at one another as to how the charges — rare in Utah — even got filed.
But a police report released in late November shows it was the Utah Office for Victims of Crime that had asked state investigators to pursue the case, concerned that multiple people had recently tried to defraud the office of money from a fund that has dwindled in recent years.
The woman called St. George police on a March afternoon in 2017, reporting she had just been bound with tape and forced to perform a sex act on an acquaintance after he injected her with drugs.
The encounter ended, she reported, after she bit him and was able to escape.
But an officer noted in a police report that the suspect had no bite marks, though the woman had said she bit him “as hard as she could.” Officers did find clear tape in the home that had hair on it and appeared to have been “wrapped around something.”
After consulting with a prosecutor in May 2017, St. George police decided to close the case after finding the woman’s account was “inconsistent with the evidence gathered during the investigation.”
Three months later, an employee at the Utah Office for Victims of Crime would cite one part of the police report — that the man had “zero” injuries despite the victim reporting she had bitten him — as an indication the woman was attempting to defraud the office out of the $750 it cost for her to have a sexual assault examination.
A Department of Public Safety investigator wrote in a report that Reparations Program Manager Melanie Scarlet had requested the investigation into “suspected fraud.”
“Melanie said they want suspects prosecuted and barred from being eligible from receiving benefits,” an investigator wrote. “[She] explained that the suspects have taken money from people who need it, and the Utah Office for Victims of Crime was now receiving less funding due to criminal justice reforms.”
The woman was charged in February with a class A misdemeanor, but prosecutors asked for the case to be dismissed in late October “in the interest of justice.”
The Salt Lake Tribune does not generally identify alleged victims of sexual assault.
The DPS report, which was released recently in response to a records request, sheds new light on how the investigation into the alleged victim began.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office filed the case in court but said it was DPS that brought limited information to a prosecutor tasked with making the call. DPS officials said they were acting on a referral from the Utah Office for Victims of Crime and noted the ultimate decision falls to the prosecutor. The director for the crime victims office would not discuss why it referred the case to investigators — but also said it has no authority to decide if a charge should be filed.
The recently released report details some of the allegations made by the Utah Office for Victims of Crime, but a section where someone with the office had submitted a written statement detailing the alleged fraud was blacked out in a copy released to The Tribune.
Gary Scheller, director of the Utah Office for Victims of Crime, said he couldn’t discuss the woman’s case because benefit claims are considered private. In a written statement, he disputed that anyone in his office had said there was a correlation between the office’s funding and “criminal justice reforms.”
He said Scarlet and others in his office did meet with DPS investigators in early 2017 to discuss whether the office’s procedures to detect fraud were adequate. He said a number of cases were discussed, though he did not say whether this woman’s case was one of those.
“Unfortunately, attempts to exploit resources do happen and prudence requires a response when they do,” he wrote. “That is not a statement that UOVC intends to address budget concerns by having victims of crime investigated and referred for prosecution if they reach out for help.”
While the office’s combined funding from federal and state sources has more than doubled in recent years, Scheller said it has seen a decrease in money to pay for sexual assault kits specifically.
He said the funding for that comes from money collected from convicted offenders ordered to pay restitution. But they’ve had “increased challenges” in getting restitution orders in recent years, Scheller said.
From fiscal 2000 through 2012, Scheller said Utah’s total surcharge annual collections increased from $13.7 million to more than $20 million. In the past four years, that funding has dropped to under $17.5 million. He said his office receives 35 percent and noted that, in that time, the costs of services for victims for things like funerals and health-related expenses have increased.
The increase in other funding the office has received, Scheller said, is federal funding for victim advocacy services throughout the state and can’t be used to pay for sexual assault examinations.
The director said his office will continue to forward cases to investigators for potential charges when appropriate but noted there is now an “additional level of review” in place. Scheller did not respond when asked to clarify what that review entails.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said last month that the charge against the St. George woman was initially filed in February based on limited information that a prosecutor received from a DPS investigator.
Gill said that once a prosecutor looked at the case more closely, it became clear that the woman did not receive any money herself — the payment went through a rape recovery center in Washington County that had helped her after she reported the crime.
As the situation became clear, Gill said, his office decided it was proper to dismiss the case. He could not explain why it took nine months to reach this conclusion.
While the case ultimately ended in a dismissal, the woman’s attorney expressed concern that handling reports this way could have a chilling effect on other victims considering whether to report a sexual assault.
“This appears to be an example of the system failing a victim,” defense attorney Amy Powers said last month. “While I think dismissal is the right result at this point, this case never should have been filed.”
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