I would say that it can happen to anyone. Even when you’re doing the right things, it’s still someone else’s decision to violate those boundaries. … That’s their choice and you’re left to pick up the pieces. You have the option to pick up the pieces and move forward.
SALT LAKE CITY — It was over Christmas break when the then-junior at BYU was sexually assaulted in her own home.
A man entered her apartment just blocks from the school’s campus in the middle of the night. She woke up during the attack that ended within minutes when he abruptly left.
“The farther I get away from it, the more I realize how lucky I was,” she told the Deseret News. She asked that her name not be used.
Still, the 2005 incident left her feeling vulnerable and rattled. She remembers looking at the faces of those she passed on campus, wondering if each person she passed could be the man who attacked her.
“I would say that it can happen to anyone,” the woman said. “Even when you’re doing the right things, it’s still someone else’s decision to violate those boundaries. … That’s their choice and you’re left to pick up the pieces. You have the option to pick up the pieces and move forward.”
One in three women in Utah will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, according to a survey on Rape in Utah released by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice in 2005 and 2007, and one in eight women will be raped. Many of them will be attacked during their time as a student, a reality which has prompted a call for action.
Earlier this year, the White House launched the Not Alone campaign, which aims to educate colleges, universities and schools about sexual assault prevention and response measures. In May, the U.S. Department of Education released a list of universities under investigation for violations in investigating sexual violence and harassment complaints.
The woman said she reported the incident to campus police and moved on. There were times she blamed herself in some ways — a common response for many sexual assault victims — because she and her roommate who were home that night had left the door unlocked for the other, not realizing both were already inside.
But she knew that didn't justify what had happened or make it her fault.
Every year, she meets with the roommate who was home that night, who had seen the man in the doorway of her room and froze with fear — another recurring response to these kinds of incidents — to talk about what happened. Her tone is one of strength and confidence, having left the past behind her.
"It's easy to replay those situations in your mind and remember the emotions and the fear," she said. "I’ve always tried to lock that door, just shut that, and move forward."
'It happens in Utah'
Jenny Erazo, program coordinator at Utah State University’s on-campus Sexual Assault and Anti-Violence Information Office, is tasked with helping sexual assault victims at the school find whatever resources they may need. Acutely aware of the occurrence of such assaults, she hopes the national dialogue surrounding the issue won’t be met with silence in this state.
“It happens in Utah,” she said. “It happens.”
In the past 10 years, she said her office has helped 233 students who were victims of sexual assault. Since the start of the 2014-15 school year, the office has already helped another eight.
Just by existing, the office raises awareness of this sometimes sensitive issue.
“I think that it does allow it to be a conversation … with our office presence,” Erazo said. “It’s allowing people to say, ‘Well, this office is here because sexual assault is happening.’”
It is a conversation they have been unafraid of at USU for more than a decade. While the Sexual Assault and Anti-Violence Information Office is focused on helping students, faculty and staff who are sexually assaulted — whether they want to report the incident, need help academically or just need a listening ear — they are also focused on education and awareness, Erazo said.
The office hosted a “red zone” event at the start of the school year, educating student about the “red zone,” or the weeks after school’s start in August when students are most likely to be sexually assaulted. It has also been shown that freshmen and sophomores are more likely to be assaulted than their older peers, Erazo said.
“People don’t talk about that because it’s not pleasant and they don’t want to,” she said.
But that doesn’t keep Erazo and the student interns who work with her from spreading the word through peer education classes and the various on-campus events, including a Walk a Mile in her Shoes event held each April that has everyone from student body leaders to student-athletes to professors trekking a mile in high heels in the name of awareness.
“We do involve students heavily,” Erazo said. “Part of that is that when the message comes across from a student, rather than from a professional, and it’s 'Hey, I’m a student here and here’s why I care about this,’ it helps bring it more to the student level.”
She is grateful that she is able to focus on the issue full time and has had nothing but positive experiences working with the university and local officials. She said the national emphasis on sexual assault prevention via the White House-driven campaigns Not Alone and It’s On Us, which is a bystander prevention training that USU student body officers are working on, is encouraging.
“Overall I think that what we’re doing is good,” Erazo said. “We’re moving in a good direction, but it’s constantly changing and evolving and, as we progress, there are changes that need to be made.”
'Patient after patient'
Julie Valentine, a BYU nursing professor and forensic nurse with Salt Lake Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, is another catalyst for change. Valentine said she was shocked when she came across the 2007 Rape in Utah survey that stated that it was “estimated that one in eight women in Utah will be raped sometime during her lifetime, and one in three will be sexually assaulted sometime during her lifetime.”
“I couldn't believe those were the numbers,” Valentine said. “I thought, ‘Why aren’t we hearing more about this?’ And then I started caring for the patients and there are tons of patients. It was patient after patient after patient.”
Valentine was spurred into action.
“I saw how sexual violence and interpersonal violence, how horrible it is and how much it hurts people, and decided my time as a nurse was probably best spent in helping to care for these patients,” she said.
In addition to her work as a nurse examiner, Valentine also harnessed the resources available to her by way of academia and began researching the issue. In one completed study, she found that only 6 percent of sexual assault cases reported between 2003 and 2011 were successfully prosecuted in Salt Lake County. Though lower than the 8 to 13 percent prosecution rates in other urban communities, Valentine said the issue isn’t unique and that the same number came back in another urban community similar in size to Salt Lake County.
“It’s not a Utah problem or a Salt Lake County problem, it’s a national problem,” she said. “It’s very much multi-factorial as to why these crimes do not move forward in the criminal justice system.”
Though she said she was disheartened by her finding, Valentine said it has already helped prompt action. She and prosecutor Donna Kelly are working with the West Valley City Police Department to train its officers on “trauma-informed responses.”
The department has started screening 100 percent of its cases with the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office and turning in 100 percent of its sexual assault kits for analysis. The Utah Legislature is looking at increasing funding to the state crime lab and passed a victim’s bill of rights requiring that police keep victims apprised of the status of their cases.
She said there has been a “community push” for sexual assault kits to be processed and ongoing work by a number of groups in the community like the Utah Coalition against Sexual Assault and the Rape Recovery Center.
“I try to explain it like you’re trying to start a campfire,” Valentine said. “The (research data) was the match, but if we didn’t have all the kindling, the tools and resources, it would have died out.”
Valentine is now working on her Ph.D., and her dissertation involves working with the state crime lab to analyze sexual assault data by combining the detailed charts created at the time of an assault exam with data from kits processed by the crime lab. Her hope is to learn more about the demographics of those sexually assaulted as well as what a victim experiences during an assault.
Her study includes data beginning in January 2010 and ending in 2013 and has already shown, based on completed analysis of the 2010 data, that 81 percent of victims sustain physical injuries. It also shows that many victims suffer from memory loss due to the trauma of the assault.
Valentine said she would like to see more bystander intervention programs, like those on college campuses, 100 percent sexual assault kit processing awareness, and a cultural shift that prompts less victim-blaming and more people standing up to say that these crimes will no longer be tolerated.
“These are horrible crimes, and it’s difficult for people to acknowledge this is happening in our community to the extent that it is is. People don’t want to talk about it, but if we don’t talk about it, nothing will change, and nothing will get better,” Valentine said.
Resources on campus
Marty Liccardo, health educator at the University of Utah’s Center for Student Wellness, said the school has long had a number of resources available to victims of sexual assault. There are violence prevention services, a women's center and a victim advocate within the Center for Student Wellness, but he said there has been more attention paid to the issue as of late.
“I think rape, sexual assault, stalking etc. have always been issues that affect college campuses, not just in Utah, but nationwide,” Liccardo said. “The safety and security of our students is our first priority, but I also think there are opportunities happening now out of the federal government."
He, too, pointed to the Not Alone initiative and the creation of a White House task force to address the issue of sexual assault at universities. He said those have led the U. to look at its standards for best practices when it comes to prevention and intervention.
“It’s a really useful and helpful tool and guideline,” Liccardo said. “Each state is different and each campus is subtly different, so making sure you follow those policies that exist, state laws and community standards is really important."
His office focuses on prevention, working to educate students through classroom presentations and reaching out to students both at large and in various communities, like housing groups, Greek organizations and student-athletes. Liccardo said they talk about the risks of alcohol use and sexual communication and consent.
"We are doing as much prevention as we can — realizing we can't prevent all assaults that happen to our students — while making sure we have intervention resources," he said, adding that they are always looking for ways to improve. “We can always do things better. If you’re not striving to do things better, there’s a problem.”
Email: emorgan@deseretnews.com, Twitter: DNewsCrimeTeam