More than 20 years ago, when I was a teenager, I cut across the corner of a park to get to a job. I'd done it dozens of times before, so it was no longer frightening -- and I wasn't particularly alert or cautious.
I should have been. I was attacked by a stranger who was apparently high on something and seemed intent on kicking me to death.Did I put myself at risk through my actions that night?
Absolutely.
Did I deserve the cracked cheekbone or other injuries?
Not a chance.
It is likely that experience that has made me react so adversely to the decision by the Salt Lake County Attorney's Office not to prosecute a man accused of raping two young women, on consecutive nights, who came to his motel room as hired escorts.
In making the decision, County Attorney David Yocom said he and seven other attorneys in his office -- including three women -- analyzed the case to see whether the alleged assailant should be charged. And they determined that it didn't meet the "standard," which he defined as "whether or not that evidence will support a guilty verdict before a jury of this community."
Those last five words, in particular, trouble me.
Is Yocom saying that other communities might convict, but this one won't, presumably because the women were paid escorts? I hope that's not his message. Because if it is, it is both patronizing and insulting to the voters of this community who make up the jury pools. It makes it sound like we couldn't possibly see past the occupation of the women who say they were raped to examine the facts of the case.
It hints that we might even think that women with certain jobs "ask" to be raped.
And that would make us a pretty backward community, indeed. By definition, rape occurs when someone says no to sexual contact but an assailant pursues it anyway.
There's no such thing as consensual rape.
Since anyone, regardless of who he or she is and what he or she does for a living, has the right to say no to unwanted sexual contact, it is possible for a prostitute or a saint to be raped. There's absolutely no evidence that indicates that rape is more -- or less -- traumatic for one than for the other. Besides, these women were escorts, which is a legal occupation in Utah.
I think Yocom and his office are guilty of a practice I call "guessing up the food chain." I had an assignments editor once, at another newspaper very early in my career, who did that. You'd ask him a question about a story, and he'd try to decide how every individual who outranked him, up to the publisher and the members of the board of directors, would react. Since he couldn't be sure, he'd be hyperconservative about it. If the story had even a hint of controversy, he'd say no.
It didn't take long to figure out that it was easier to just ask the publisher the question in the first place. It took the guesswork out and, oddly, was a lot less restrictive.
As a taxpayer, I don't like it when public officials waste money. I certainly don't think the courts need to be clogged with every allegation that is ever made. If there's no evidence, there's no evidence and prosecutors have an obligation not to ruin lives by bringing charges the evidence doesn't support. In this case, there seems to be disagreement about the evidence. The police who investigated felt they built a pretty good case.
I don't know what the evidence says. But I do believe when the charge is as serious as rape, the County Attorney's Office should not be guessing whether "a jury of this community" would convict or acquit.
That's not fair to the accused or the accusers. Both deserve their day in court. And it's a hard slap to members of this community.
The two women likely knew that some people would figure they "deserved it," because they went willingly into that motel room. That's probably why the woman who said she was attacked first didn't immediately report it. It is very unlikely, however, that they expected prosecutors to send a message that can be interpreted to mean being an escort makes you fair game.
I don't know what occurred in that motel room. But neither does David Yocom.
I do know that Utah voters are smart enough to sort through the evidence and fair enough to set aside any prejudices they might harbor regarding a person's occupation.
We elect officials to represent our interests. Not to insult us "as a community."
These women took chances. They did cut across the park. That doesn't make it right. If they're telling the truth about what happened, they didn't get what they deserve from our legal system. And neither did he.
Deseret News staff writer Lois M. Collins may be reached by e-mail at lois@desnews.com