Letter: Education on consent and what constitutes rape is essential
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Activists in Utah gather outside of Salt City Tattoo on Friday, Dec. 22, 2017, to protest following an Instagram post made by the shop s official Instagram account. The post in question was of a gift provided during the shop s white elephant exchange, a gift one of the artists at the parlor called a rape kit, containing leather gloves, black duct tape, a bottle of lubricant, rope, and a knife.
By Angela Hronek | The Public Forum
| Feb. 21, 2021, 1:00 p.m. | Updated: 9:09 p.m.
The Utah House Education Committee messed up.
SALT LAKE CITY Law enforcement officers around the country are warning survivors of sexual assault not to buy kits allowing them to gather DNA evidence at home instead of going to a hospital.
Now a Utah lawmaker wants to go a step further and ban the sale of the kits that she says can seem convenient but ultimately give false hope because they re widely considered inadmissible in court. I don t want to set up someone for failure, said Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City.
The kits aren t yet available in Utah, but Romero said she wants to keep it that way as makers market them as a smart choice during the coronavirus pandemic.
Special report: Young sex abuse survivors, backed by a county attorney, say a new Utah law deprived them of justice
Serial abusers should be tried and punished in adult court, they say.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Annie, now 20, was 16-years old when a classmate in high school raped her and then told her from that moment on, You re my girlfriend, but I m not your boyfriend. From that moment on, he stalked her almost daily. San Juan County Attorney Kendall Laws said he wanted to prosecute Annie s attacker in adult court for sexual assault, but a gap in the law prevented him from doing so.