Tribune editorial: Once again, Utah puts the burden on sexual assault victims

“Sexual assault victims never get justice.”

That, according to a civil lawsuit filed against a prominent Brigham Young University football player, is what an officer of the Provo Police Department allegedly told a woman who reported being sexually assaulted.

Provo police have said they “have a team of dedicated investigators and victim advocates whose sole mission is to provide justice to victims of sexual abuse,” and that they did not discourage the victim.

It’s possible we will never know who said what during the 2023 complaint. The veracity of the allegation is likely to be determined in the courts.

We do know that no sexual assault case will ever come to justice if victims are unwilling to report. Sadly, it becomes the duty of those victimized to come forward and tell the truth, difficult as it may be, and insist on being heard. We recognize the unfair burden this puts on victims.

And one way that it will get any easier is if all of our law enforcement agencies, and the state and local governments that empower them, insist on those officers and prosecutors taking reports of sexual assault seriously.

For an officer of the law to tell the victim of a crime, any crime, that their case is not worth pursuing does not just hurt that particular victim, if this is indeed what happened.

Word gets around.

Future victims — one out of eight women in America are victims of rape — are discouraged from reporting. Especially in these cases, where the details are embarrassing and the suffering involved, they are told, probably futile.

It emboldens other criminals to commit similar acts in the belief that there will be no retribution. Because, hey, even the cops say so.

The officer investigating the woman’s report asked her to name her attacker, which she hesitated to do. The department had received a report of another incident, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday, and wanted to know if the suspect was the same in both cases.

After she divulged the identity of her alleged attacker, the woman’s lawsuit claims, police recommended that she take the case no further. Because, the officer allegedly said, “sexual assault victims never get justice.”

The alleged attacker in this case is Jake Retzlaff, BYU’s national standout quarterback, a fact that brings much more attention to this case.

He has not been criminally charged and, through his attorney, proclaims his innocence — an assumption he is entitled to until the case is resolved.

The alleged victim, a Salt Lake County woman, is identified in the civil lawsuit only as “Jane Doe A.G.” She is seeking damages for battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The case brings to mind too many instances of rape allegations in Utah that were not investigated in a timely manner — if ever.

Sometimes it was because law enforcement blamed the victim. Sometimes, when BYU students were involved, the school’s Honor Code was weaponized to make the woman’s own behavior the issue.

In other cases, including a series of attacks in Logan, because the perpetrator was a star university athlete.

This history of how sexual assault cases are handled in Utah makes it that much more difficult for victims to come forward and report what has happened to them.

And all the more important that our law enforcement agencies take them seriously when they do.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.