Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Lawmakers revised House Bill 354 to track false reporting across all crimes.
- Sexual assault survivors and experts opposed the original focus on false sexual assault accusations.
- The bill, now amended, passed committee with a commitment for further refinement.
SALT LAKE CITY – Lawmakers advanced a crime data collection bill Wednesday, after making changes to language in the proposed legislation that sexual assault survivors, experts and advocates found concerning.
HB354, filed on Jan. 29, called for prosecutors to collect data on how many people they charge with making false sexual assault accusations.
The notion that sexual assault cases would be singled out and scrutinized had several Utahns raising alarm bells.
"If we want to collect data regarding false reporting, it should be regarding false reporting of all crimes," leading sexual assault researcher Dr. Julie Valentine told KSL.
"It's certainly not targeting victims of sexual assault," said Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, who is sponsoring the legislation.
Wilcox filed a substitute version just before Wednesday's hearing. He updated that section of the bill to call for tracking of all criminal cases in which a victim "recants."
Sexual assault survivor Taryn Evans attended the hearing to speak out against the original version of the bill, which she called "damaging."
"The only reporting problem we have is underreporting," Evans said. "What you do and say really, really matters. And it affects victims who are hopeful you'll do the right thing."
Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said he worried the provision would have a chilling effect, further dissuading survivors from coming forward. He also said his office could not come up with an example of a false report in recent years.
"I can tell the representative right now, in our institutional memory, the number is zero," Gray said.
Sonya Martinez-Ortiz, executive director of the Rape Recover Center, reminded lawmakers at the hearing about Utah's sexual assault statistics.
"As many of you know, Utah has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the country, and we know that it remains to be one of the most underreported crimes," she said.
Valentine has studied the issue in Utah for years. Despite myths that there are many false reports of sexual assault, her data shows it's a rare occurrence.
"We found in Salt Lake County, looking at years of data, that 3% of cases were deemed as false reports," Valentine said.
Wilcox said singling out sexual assault was not intentional, and they plan to now collect data on false reporting related to all types of crime.
"We're just trying to get information on how often this happens," Wilcox said. HB354 passed out of the committee with a favorable recommendation and a commitment from Wilcox to keep working on it.
