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Dickinson College students protest on-campus sexual assaults in 2011.
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It feels like only yesterday that we were covering Brock Turner, the Stanford rapist who became one of the most hated people in America after receiving only a six-month sentence for his assault of a student. Both his victim and Vice President Joe Biden memorably spoke out against the epidemic of sexual assaults on America’s college campuses. Unfortunately, it seems their words fell on deaf ears among police and school administrators in Logan, Utah.
Alex Stuckey of the Salt Lake Tribune reported recently that four different women told police they were sexually assaulted by the same Utah State University student on four separate occasions throughout 2015. Three of those women were Utah State Students and reported the alleged assaults to the school. The women reported the assaults separately, without coordination.
Though Utah State and local police have opened investigations, as of the time of this writing, neither the school nor police have taken any punitive action against the alleged attacker.
The male student accused of the assaults has not been charged with any crime, so his name has not yet been released. The Salt Lake Tribune reports, however, that he remained on campus through the spring of 2016, when he graduated from Utah State.
This story gained traction when tweeted out by the Twitter account for controversial documentary The Hunting Ground and written up in Raw Story.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah State University declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality concerns. Spokesman Tim Vitale told the Tribune that the school uses “national best-practice procedures… designed to allow the victims themselves to make decisions about how their cases will move forward while at the same time allowing them to receive university support in whatever way they choose.”
One of the victims reported that, after telling Logan detective Kendall Olsen about her assault, Olsen asked her “what she was wearing.”
Utah State University released a statement on their website, saying they are “looking closely” at the “issue of sexual assault.” It remains to be seen, however, what action (if any) will be taken against the man accused of these assaults.
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