Marissa

When my case made it past screening, that's when they felt like they have enough evidence that they could make an arrest.

My prosecutor prepared me that the first plea deal that they would present would be something ridiculous.

And then we just negotiate that over the course of months and months.

Eventually we settled that he would be on the registry for 10 years.

The jail time that we agreed to was 30 days.

When I got in contact with my victim advocate, Alex, about a year into the process, I was telling her about it and she was just floored by what had happened.

She was the one that put me in contact with my lawyers for my civil case.

As the civil process started, I was warned that it would take a long time.

Civil cases can take years.

And that's what ended up happening with me.

The three entities that we decided to sue were the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, and the Board of Higher Education.

They put the Board of Higher Education in there because the Board of Higher Education is over all of the schools.

We definitely thought that there should have been some communication through the University of Utah and UVU about my situation.

Instead of them sending me on a goose chase to all of these different places, they could have simply sent an email and said, this is what's going on.

I think it's really important that that's available to students because these universities are so close and there are people who take classes at multiple universities.

There just should be some oversight in that way.

A few months in, the judge dismissed Utah Valley University and the Board of Higher Education from my lawsuit.

So all that was left was the University of Utah.

When those two entities were dismissed from my case, I wasn't as shocked about the Board of Higher Education, but I was fairly shocked about my university, Utah Valley, because there was absolutely no follow-up and there was absolutely no help for me.

And I was their student.