In 2014, my daughter started attending BYU Provo. She loved it at first, but then she noticed that many girls in her dorm would tell racial jokes and hate on transgendered people. Having been raised in the Seattle area and having worked in her HS theater department, she took great offence to this and wondered how people that seemed so nice could behave so mean.

At the end of her first semester (right before finals started), she accepted a blind date with one Samuel Butler (I can use his name, as he is currently in prison for raping a 6-year-old girl). Instead of driving downtown as she expected, he drove up Provo canyon where she was sexually assaulted. When she got home, she did three things:

1. She told her roommates what happened.
2. She wrote a very detailed account of what happened.
3. She did a google search to see how many other girls at BYU had the same experience. The search came back empty, and she suddenly felt very alone.

The next day she went to the campus police, who took her to the Title IX office and to the Orem police (who have jurisdiction over Provo canyon). The Orem police opened and closed the case immediately without even talking to Samuel Butler. Just months earlier, Orem police officers had to talk Samuel Butler down from a bridge where he was considering suicide due to all the girls that he raped (he even confessed to raping children, but the parents did not press charges). They should have known that he was problematic, but they did not care.

That night she talked with her Bishop, who was sympathetic but treated it as if she had done something wrong. He had a chance to help, but he blew it. He did talk to the Samuel Butler’s Bishop, who told him that no action would be taken against him and that my daughter should just “get over it.”

Sarah Westerberg oversaw the Title IX office at BYU, but she also had ties to the honor code office. When the sexual assault was reported, she triggered an honor code investigation to determine whether my daughter should be discipled for being “immoral.” The Title IX office did do an investigation, however, and they determined that a sexual assault likely occurred. This did not deter a disciplinary hearing, however, where they met to determine if a punishment was warranted. Fortunately, they decided that it was not.

I had a deeply disturbing phone call with Sarah Westerberg where she explained that 1) sexual assaults never happen at BYU and 2) she felt it her obligation to punish my daughter so she would be humbled and repent for her misdeeds. She reminded me of Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series (British accent included).

Doing a little research, I learned that Utah’s rapes-per-capita was above average, but they had the lowest prosecution rate in the entire country (less than 10%). In fact, when Samuel Butler went on trial for the rape of a Dixie College student, he was found not guilty even though he admitted on the stand that she said “no.” I started to realize that the LDS culture had a very dark underbelly.