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SALT LAKE CITY — Just a small fraction of reported sexual assaults in Utah lead to rape charges filed in court, but year after year, a proposed solution has been met with resistance by lawmakers or ignored entirely on Capitol Hill.
The legislator behind those repeated efforts hopes this year will be different.
"This is one of our more serious crimes that never really gets the attention it needs," said Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City. "So, I'm hoping as we move forward this is a step in that direction."
Ever since her perpetrator got what Taryn Evans considers a sweetheart plea deal — no prison time — Evans has made it her mission to advocate for change. That's included meeting with some of Utah's most powerful lawmakers.
"I looked at them and said, 'You are inviting rapists to Utah,'" Evans said.
Many people are familiar with the concept of fight or flight responses, but Evans experienced an incredibly common trauma response people don't often talk about: freezing.
It's a trauma response known as tonic immobility, according to Dr. Julie Valentine, a certified sexual assault examiner and leading sexual assault researcher in Utah.
"I have almost 10,000 cases from the state of Utah, and we collect data on if victims fought back. And what we have found is that only about 10% to 12% of victims of rape do fight back, punch, hit, kick," Valentine said. "The reason, and we see this in the quotes over and over from the victims, is they're afraid."
While it's normal for victims to not fight back, those cases are difficult to prosecute under Utah's current rape statute. When a victim freezes and doesn't resist, defendants can argue they didn't know the sexual activity was not consensual.
As a solution, Romero has filed several bills in recent years that would create a new third-degree felony offense for instances in which a perpetrator fails to get consent from a victim through words or actions. But those bills have been met with resistance or ignored all together.
"It's really frustrating," Evans said. "I feel like there's a huge amount of pushback."
"I'm a person that never gives up," Romero said.
This year, she's presenting a different, scaled-back proposal. HB377 won't create any new crimes. Instead, it clarifies that "silence, lack of protest, or lack of resistance alone do not demonstrate consent."
"I'm hoping this is what it takes to bring everyone together to believe women, because in most cases, we're seeing the people that are the victims are women," Romero said. "We have a lot of people out there on our streets right now who feel empowered to hurt other people because they're not held accountable."
"One of the main problems is that we teach kids, 'no means no,'" said Steve Burton, director of Utah's Defense Attorney Association.
Burton said the group opposes Romero's bill, as it has with her prior attempts at addressing how Utah's law handles the issue of consent.
"If we get to a point where that is clear and it's obvious that everyone should know exactly what defines consent and what doesn't define consent, then we will have much less of a problem opposing language that makes the law consistent with what society's understanding is," Burton said. "But right now, society's understanding of what constitutes consent versus what doesn't constitute consent is not uniform."
The last time one of Romero's consent bills got a hearing in the Legislature was in 2021, and six of 11 lawmakers voted no, killing the bill in committee.
Opposition to the bill during the 2021 House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee hearing included concerns of false reports being prosecuted, despite decades of credible research showing false claims of sexual assault are extremely rare — between 2 and 8 percent. Experts say that is the same false reporting rate as any other type of crime.
"It's really frustrating because there's no data to support the concern that is getting the attention," Evans said, "and then there's all the data to support the concern that is being ignored."
The measure has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee. Romero hopes it will get a hearing soon.
