Article Last Updated: 08/28/2005 02:37:17 AM
Utah flails against rape crisis
No state money for prevention, and taboos bury the topic
By Elizabeth Neff
The Salt Lake Tribune
Wendy, a rape victim who speaks out against sexual violence, holds her daughter at her Utah home. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune )
Wendy never bothered reporting the times her husband raped her.
Her father, a law-enforcement officer, had made it clear her place was with the man she married at age 17. When her husband was reported - and prosecuted - for sexually assaulting other members of her family, he served just 22 days.
She eventually left him after he molested other children, and he is now in prison for another rape. The spiral of abuse began in Wendy's childhood: Her parents, she said, ignored it when a male relative sexually abused her.
"As I look over my life, I see the pattern," said Wendy, now 32, remarried and living in northern Utah. "But when you are in a situation where you are being raped or verbally abused, there is such an insecurity there, of feeling like you can't even walk out the door, let alone take your kids and go."
A recent phone survey of more than 1,200 Utah women sought to tap into the experiences of women like Wendy, who didn't report sexual assaults to police. Based on the women's responses, state authorities calculated earlier this month that one in eight Utah women are raped. That grim statistic followed another year when Utah's rate of reported rapes, based on the state's population, surpassed the national average.
What's being done in Utah to combat rape?
Victim advocates have developed a handful of programs to combat sexual assaults. But they say that a lingering attitude that rape Related Articles
Getting reliable data on rapes is difficult
is a taboo subject and the fact that Utah doesn't set aside any state money for rape prevention hampers their efforts.
The only funding source exclusively for rape prevention in Utah is an annual federal grant of about $300,000 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
For fiscal year 2006, the money will be divided among nine programs, chiefly education efforts in the state's schools, said Teresa Brechlin of the state's Violence and Injury Prevention Program.
"We choose to take our money and pass the majority on to rape education programs, because we feel like those grass-roots programs are where we can make the best impact," she said.
That's what Leith Hallows, a rape crisis coordinator in Davis County, is hoping for. She visits junior high and high school health classes in a program that began three years ago. Last year, she reached 600 students; this year she's on track to teach at least 1,000.
Hallows describes "red flag" actions: controlling behavior or stalking, inequality in a relationship, lying. She invites any student already victimized to speak with her. In all-male classes, she focuses on stereotypes and peer pressure.
"Over the last few years, we have seen sexuality become more and more evident and they have a mind-set about what they are supposed to be," she said. "We give them new ideas about what they can be, give them choices and ways to respond to their peer group if someone is putting pressure on you about not having sex."
Efforts to reach out to boys and men, says the CDC, are the cutting edge of rape prevention. It's known as "primary prevention" - stopping rape by curbing sexually violent behavior in men.
Marty Liccardo coordinates a men's outreach program for the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault. The national movement toward working with young men might appear "sexist, but statistically 98 percent of perpetrators are male," he said.
A Washington, D.C.-based group called Men Can Stop Rape has taken the lead. Men of Strength clubs for high schoolers in the D.C. area are expanding into California this year, playing on something known as "bystander theory."
"There are plenty of men who don't commit violence against women, but the problem is, they don't speak out against it," said the group's director of outreach, Pat McGann.
Similar groups have formed at the University of Utah, Weber State University and Utah State University, discussing sexual boundaries, consent and coercion in a high-risk age group.
Corinne Graffunder, a branch chief at the CDC, said early research has shown mentoring is an effective rape prevention strategy. Bystander theory applies to both men and women, she said.
"We know there are opportunities where bystander behavior could have made a difference or might have made a difference," she said.
Kathi Kuntz, 35, wants to enlist those bystanders. A Salt Lake City nurse practitioner who sees rape victims at work, she was frustrated noticing many times that alcohol was involved.
"I've heard more stories of possible date-rape drugging," she said. "One of the things we hear all the time is 'I was in the bar and my friends disappeared and someone offered me a ride home.' "
When women are "losing friends at the bar, and getting drugged at the bar, that seems like an education campaign would help," she said.
With help from friends and focus groups, Kuntz created posters with a message for young women. One example: "The Buddy System Isn't Just For Girl Scouts. Rape Happens. Drink Smart."
Yet some bar owners she approaches to hang the posters in their bathrooms, Kuntz said, are simply uncomfortable with the word "rape."
Wendy says she's volunteered to speak out about what she went through in the hopes of helping another.
Prevention, she said, must start in the home. She agrees young people should be warned about signs she didn't see in her own relationship.
Her husband kept her out of school. He told her what to eat, how to dress and how to act.
"He would run into some girl he went to school with and he would leave me off to the side and not even introduce me. It was, 'You're off to the side, you don't matter,' and I think that is a big red flag to look at when you're younger."
It's only been in the past year Wendy has had counseling, at Salt Lake City's Rape Recovery Center, a resource she was not aware of during her marriage.
"It's helped me to move on and not take on the guilt and not feel like I'm a horrible person because I ran into him and he became part of my life," she said.
Heather Stringfellow, director of the center, said she was "relieved" at the effort behind the recent rape phone survey, and believes its numbers are valid. What shocked her most: Few women knew about resources for help.
"I was living in a bubble that people chose not to call us," she said, "not that people didn't know we were out there."
[email protected] A 2005 phone survey of 1,232 adult women was designed to include victims who didn't report. "Rape In Utah" found 31.7 percent of the women interviewed experienced some form of sexual violence, suggesting one in three Utah women will be sexually assaulted. After 12.7 percent of the women said they had been raped, researchers estimated one in eight Utah women will be raped.
Many U.S. police agencies track offenses using Uniform Crime Reporting, an FBI coding system that dates to the 1930s. Based on Utah's UCR reports in 2003, there were nearly 38 rapes reported per 100,000 Utahns - which is more than 18 percent higher than the national rate. However, potential flaws in the system are that it counts only the most serious offense during a crime, and coding errors are common.
In the past five years, prosecutors statewide have filed 654 felony rape charges.
2003: One Year
of Utah Rape Reports
Utah police say at least 843 rapes were reported to them in 2003.
That year, court records show 126 felony rape cases were filed statewide.
Of the cases filed, just over half were dismissed - either outright or as part of plea deals to lower offenses; 29 percent resulted in guilty verdicts; 11 percent are still pending.
