Estimated read time: 10-11 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Kristy thought she had taken all the right precautions.
She agreed to meet Samuel Whitney Faber at a restaurant after initially making contact with him on the dating app Mutual, a dating platform catering to single men and women who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They had messaged each other several times over the course of a few days before actually meeting. When they finally met at a West Valley restaurant, Kristy says they spent a long time talking about his church mission.
"The whole time I was talking to him, it was about going to church, it was about his mission which I found out after he pled guilty that he didn't even serve a mission. He made that all up. We had a whole half-hour to 45-minute conversation about his mission, and it never even happened," she said.
Last month, Faber, 43, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting and raping Kristy and sexually abusing two other women. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 21. But because of what he pleaded to, there will not be any minimum-mandatory prison sentences. Kristy expects he'll likely be paroled in a few years. To her, it's the latest blow in what has already been a long and difficult process.
"What victims have to go through in this whole process is awful. And I don't blame the other women for not wanting to go through it. It's hard. To get to this point to where we are today has been two years," she said. "I feel like I was on trial."
But now, Kristy, and Misti, who was also a victim of Faber, are speaking out to try and prevent other women from becoming sexual assault victims. They are also hoping to encourage any other women who may have already been victimized by Faber to come forward and report their cases to police.
"No amount of time is going to fix me, because I'm already broken for the rest of my life. And my poor kids are already broken for the rest of their lives, and I can't fix that, which is the only reason I agreed to the stupid sentence that he got," Kristy told KSL.com in tears.
"But I have to save other people. I know, I know he will do this again."
'I was OK until I wasn't'
Kristy went out with Faber on March 6, 2022. By the time the night was over, she had been physically and sexually assaulted at his Sandy house and again as Faber was driving her back to her car. In December 2022, he was charged in 3rd District Court with aggravated sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping and forcible sexual abuse.
Misti met Faber on the Bumble dating app and in June 2022 agreed to meet him at his house. He inappropriately touched Misti several times. But because he did not rape her, Misti says she didn't call police because she didn't think her case would go anywhere.
It wasn't until she heard about Kristy's story that she decided to come forward.
"The only reason I ended up coming forward was because I saw her story on KSL months after he had been arrested," Misti said. "(I thought) if that will strengthen her case so that he goes to prison, then I have to do that. I still didn't think they would file charges in my case because he didn't rape me. … I was flabbergasted that charges were filed (in my case)."
A third woman stepped forward a few months later. She also met Faber on Mutual and was sexually abused after agreeing to go to his residence to go swimming. Faber was charged with three more counts of forcible sexual abuse.
On May 31, Faber entered into a plea deal to resolve all three cases, pleading guilty to amended charges of rape and forcible sodomy, first-degree felonies; plus aggravated sexual assault and two counts of forcible sexual abuse, third-degree felonies.
Kristy, whose encounter was the most violent and who was the most seriously injured of the three women — she suffered a stroke months later that doctors told her could be attributed to Faber strangling her and damaging her carotid artery — says even though she wasn't in favor of the plea deal, it spared all three women from having to take the witness stand.
"If we had gone to trial, they would have torn us apart on the stand. It's hard enough to go through and have to relive it over and over and over and over every couple of weeks, every month for years. So for our sanity, we agreed to do the plea deal. But I don't agree to the plea deal," she said.
Since the case has been settled, the three women have been able to talk to each other in more detail about their experiences with Faber. What they discovered is that their experiences are very similar. Faber presented himself well. And after getting to know his dates, he would eventually invite the women back to his residence and try to convince them to get into his hot tub or swimming pool. Prosecutors noted in charging documents in Kristy's case that once Faber got her back to his house, "he was very aggressive and tried to persuade the victim to engage in sex acts and get into the hot tub."
Kristy and Misti both thought they had taken the safety precautions they needed to as this wasn't their first experience in the dating world.
"I did all of those things. Every single one of them. And it still happened," Kristy said. "There's nothing on (dating apps) that can protect you from someone being manipulative and lying flat out to you. Because he seemed so nice and so charming."
In hindsight, Kristy says Faber said things when she met him at a restaurant that should have raised red flags, such as whether she had a conceal carry permit or if her family was able to track her on her phone.
But in the moment, Misti, who says she has had similar conversations with other dates, said it all seemed like part of the ritual of getting to know someone.
"It's the type of things you typically talk about. 'Do you vote for Biden? Do you vote for Trump? Do you like guns? Do you not like guns?' It's a normal conversation. But in hindsight, that could have been him assessing whether I'm a threat to him," she said. "In hindsight, it's a red flag. But when getting to know someone, it seems normal."
But there were also little inappropriate comments of a sexual nature that Faber would make, Misti recalled.
"Don't ignore those little red flags. If something makes your intuition go, 'Hmm, that was kind of weird.' Just trust it. Because you're far better off trusting it than finding out the hard way that you should have relied on your instinct," she said.
"I knew not to get in his car. I knew. I knew better. But we talked for over an hour at the restaurant. He was nice, and we were laughing and we were having fun," Kristy added. "I was OK until I wasn't."
Both women say whether a young person is using a dating app for the first time or using one after a divorce or separation, there are precautions every woman should take. The big one, they say, is not to end up in a situation where the woman finds herself alone with her date.
"Do not go alone. Make sure people always know where you are. Do not go to their home," said Kristy, who also advised going on a double date, or at the very least having a friend sit in the same restaurant nearby and prearranging a "help" signal.
Until both parties really get to know each other, both women suggest going on dates in the daytime, making sure a friend or family member knows where you are, and making sure you talk to the prospective date a few times before actually agreeing to meet them.
Even while KSL.com was talking to Kristy in a public coffee shop, her mother walked into the business about 30 minutes into the interview. Kristy waved to her and told her everything was OK, and then acknowledged she had told her mother to enter the business after a half hour to check on her as a safety precaution.
The women also advise to research their potential date on social media or public resources such as the Utah State Courts online system called Xchange, which allows people to look up criminal histories of others for a small fee.
Hoping others will come forward
Since their cases went to court, the women say they have been contacted by numerous other women who claim they are also victims of Faber but don't want to go through the legal process.
"After hearing everyone else's stories, it was obvious that he does the same thing over and over and over and over. And he got away with it over and over and over because women don't come forward, because it's hard. It's horrible to tell the police. It's horrible to go through the rape kit at the hospital after you've just been raped, to be swabbed from head to toe, inside and out. It's horrible.
"This is the hardest thing I've ever done, and it's the worst thing I've ever gone through," Kristy said.
She recounted how bad she was shaking when she went to the courthouse and saw Faber for the first time after her assault, which caused her to throw up in the courtroom.
Both Kristy and Misti say the court process itself becomes extremely difficult, not just because they have to continually relive what happened to them, but because of the constant delays that have become part of the process.
But Kristy is hopeful now that Faber is about to be sentenced to prison that other women who may have been victimized by him will have the strength to contact police, which she hopes will result in additional criminal charges.
Kristy gives a lot of praise to West Valley police detective Ray Wilhelm for investigating her case and taking the time to compile a strong case to present to the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office for prosecution.
"There's no way (Faber would) be in jail right now if the detective didn't do his work the way he did it," she said.
West Valley police told KSL.com it is possible there are additional victims. And if anyone believes they were or know someone who was a victim of Faber, they are asked to call 801-840-4000.
"It's important that women know that just because he didn't physically rape you, there are still felony charges that they will file," Misti said.
Both women say they will be in the courtroom for Faber's sentencing. And then each time he has a hearing before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
"I want him to stay in there so much longer, and I don't know how to do it. But he's going to get out, and he will do it to someone else. And there's nothing that can stop that from happening unless you know where to go to check background information on somebody. I didn't know how to do that," Kristy said.
