Over the past decade, state officials have pushed hard to improve the handling of sex crimes in the state. But a new study shows that, while some progress has been made, we still have a long, long way to go to get to where we should be in Utah.
The research by Julie Valentine, a professor and associate dean for undergraduate studies and research and at Brigham Young University’s College of Nursing, found that charges are never filed in roughly eight out of every nine sexual assault cases.
Valentine’s work, based on an analysis of cases between 2012 and 2017 in Salt Lake County and 2010 to 2018 in Utah County, found that most cases never make it to prosecutor’s desk to be screened for charges. All told, just one in every 10 cases ends in a conviction or a plea deal.
That’s troubling data for a number of reasons.
For one thing, we know that rape and sexual assault are drastically underreported, so the universe of assailants who evade justice is undoubtedly much higher than the figures reflect. It’s also important to note that in every single one of these cases the victim had a full sexual assault kit and forensic exam conducted.
Underneath those broad takeaways were some additional troubling findings.
In Utah County, Valentine found, minority suspects are 2.8 times as likely to be charged with a crime as white suspects — suggesting that justice in this instance is by no means colorblind.
And nearly two out of every five Utah County cases that were not sent to prosecutors were abandoned by police because, they said, the cases lacked evidence or were unfounded — nearly four times the rate as in Salt Lake County.
Valentine said when she presented her findings to law enforcement in Utah County, she was told it was because of “cultural” differences in the county — where women allegedly regret having sex and then claim it was against their will.
It is an absurd and dangerous notion that a misplaced sense of guilt would drive someone to fabricate an assault, report it to police and subject oneself to a forensic exam. If that is indeed how law enforcement approaches any of these cases, it calls for a radical change of mindset in the county.
And it ignores that in about three quarters of all the cases studied by Valentine the victim had documented injuries, and roughly half the victims had injuries consistent with a sexual attack.
All of this points to a clear conclusion.
“We need to do better for survivors,” Sonya Martinez-Ortiz, executive director of Rape Recovery Center, told my colleague Becky Jacobs.
Indeed, we do.
Both Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill and Utah County Attorney David Leavitt — who took office in 2019, after the cutoff for Valentine’s data — say they have taken steps to shore up their processes and make sure that these cases get the attention and diligence they deserve.
Indeed, Gill’s office provided data showing that in 2020, charges were filed in 40% of the 1,382 cases sent to his Special Victims Unit.
This kind of data is critically important so we can better understand how our justice system is working — or not working — and it shouldn’t take researchers scouring years of police and court records to bring it to light.
That analysis should include taking a careful look at the racial and ethnic components of these cases to figure out if minority suspects are regularly being subjected to a harsher measure of justice.
The Legislature should act to require the uniform and universal reporting of these data points annually by every county attorney’s office in the state.
Second, we need more resources devoted to supporting victims. In Salt Lake County, more than half the time when a case was not referred to a prosecutor it’s because the victim was uncooperative or did not want to pursue prosecution. In Utah County, the figure was 42%.
With better support and advocacy survivors might be more willing to follow through on their cases. Even if they don’t pursue criminal charges, at least the survivors can access services to help them heal.
We also need to look at the training that law enforcement is receiving, particularly if departments are willing to chalk up so many cases to falsified reports blamed on guilt and regret.
I don’t want to diminish the progress we’ve made in addressing sexual assault. Instead of leaving sexual assault kits gathering dust on shelves for years, the state now requires every kit to be processed — an important step both so survivors can have some level of trust in the system and because it has helped identify assailants that would otherwise not have been found.
Survivors who are dissatisfied with how their cases are handled at the local level are also entitled to have the case reviewed by the Attorney General’s office to make sure another set of eyes reviews the facts.
More resources and support are available and gradually the public’s mindset is shifting.
But there still is more to be done, because if we want victims of these crimes to come forward and seek justice — and we absolutely do — it is critical that they have confidence in the process and assurances that their case will be treated with the diligence and sensitivity it deserves.
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