Chapter 1: What topics are covered in the content warning?
Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. Please consume with care. This season discusses sexual, physical, and psychological violence. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes. Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media.
The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. The university's responses to our outreach for comment are included within our reporting this chapter. Thank you so much for listening. Think you know me, you don't know me well at all You don't know anybody till you talk to someone Last time on Something Was Wrong
I knew things about him from his past. I knew that he had substance issues because Utah is so small and everybody knows each other. I always anticipated that because we had this mutual friend and because we had a mutual understanding of each other, that nothing like this would have ever happened. It wasn't even on my radar. In the time I've known Marissa, I had never seen her like that before.
So to see her that shaken up and that emotional felt very big and like something serious happened. After they finished the exam, the victim advocate, the first thing that she told me to do was to go talk to my college. I made an appointment with UVU's Title IX office. He kept telling me, you look like you're doing well. And I remember being so hurt by that because I was dying inside.
When I met with UVU, my parents hadn't known yet about the assault. I ended up telling them after the meeting. It also made it so much easier for me to feel confident to go talk to the University of Utah. Here's Marissa. I emailed the Title IX office. They asked me if I was a student and I said no. They were a little bit spotty responding to emails.
And then I had said, I'm wondering what your process is because I had been raped by one of their student athletes. And after that, they started communicating a little bit more. I set up an appointment with their intake person. This was about two weeks after my assault. This time I did bring a friend.
She was not there and she was not at the hospital, but she was one of my good friends and she knew the severity of what had happened. And I really felt like I needed her there to double down with me about how serious this was. We got to the Title IX office up at the U and they let us into this little room and There was a woman there.
She had mentioned to us that she was fairly new and that she was the intake person. I sat there with her and I explained everything again, which I also have to note is just so traumatizing to have to repeat such a sensitive thing to strangers. But I did because I thought they were supposed to help me. She was having a really hard time making eye contact with me or my friend.
She was looking up at the ceiling a lot. She mentioned multiple times that they are a neutral office and that their responsibility is to their students. And because I'm not a student there, there's not a lot she can do for me. Throughout speaking with her, she really discouraged me from telling her the name of my perpetrator.
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Chapter 2: How does Marissa describe her initial feelings after the assault?
We work with his coaches and we can make sure he shows up to practice on time, make sure that he's doing the things that he needs to do. I'm like, you're going to give him more schooling. And so I asked her, I said, you don't even suspend him. There is no consequence for his action. And she said, no, that's not really our place to decide in the alternate resolution process.
I remember being so shocked by that. She explained that the alternate resolution in her experience gave victims the most closure and that it was really healing for the victims that she had seen go through the process. So she was definitely making the alternate resolution look like the best thing to do.
I explained to her that the weekend before he was driving intoxicated on campus and that he was driving intoxicated the night before the assault. She had mentioned to me, we don't deal with substance abuse issues. And she said, because the party was off campus, that there wasn't a lot that she could do that they don't work with off campus situations. And that's what she said, situations.
And I said, he plays football for you. He spends 90% of his time on your campus. And she said, I know, but we have no control over what happens at off-campus parties. She brought up multiple times that he's their student and they have his back. Her responsibility is to her students. I tried to explain to her they were all football players there. It was right after a game.
They were asking us not to post pictures, not to say anything because they didn't want to be caught drinking. I do think it was interesting because one of the players who was there the night of the assault, he played a lot more and he was what you would call like one of their star athletes
I had mentioned him and that he was there and immediately she kind of perks up and she's like, he wasn't the one that raped you, was he? And I said, no. And then she like slouches back into her chair. She literally said, oh, good. After explaining the whole story to her, she told me that police sometimes isn't the best route because it's hard to prove.
That basically my perpetrator has to say, yes, I raped her in order for charges to be filed, which is not true. I want to make that very clear. Never once did she validate my experience or did she validate what I had been through? It was just very much apathy throughout the whole meeting process.
I'm sitting there face to face with this woman who should understand the fear that women live with every single day, who knows the history of athletes at their school specifically. In my case, I can't speak for other cases, but I believe that they were avoiding the
making this a big public spectacle, especially the University of Utah, because they had been under so much heat the year previous because there was a student athlete, a girl who ran track or cross country, I believe. And she was shot by her boyfriend after reporting it over and over and over again to the campus police.
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Chapter 3: What steps did Marissa take after the assault?
I was like, this is what you have now after being like absolutely obliterated in the media. After I met with the University of Utah Title IX office, they sent me an email. And in the email... It said, thank you so much for coming in. We're so sorry for your experience. We talked about here in our meeting and started listing all of these things that literally didn't happen.
I remember sending it to my friend who was with me and she's like, is this just something they send out to everyone? It was so general and so standard. I remember being so confused, like, I think she sent this to the wrong person. It was after that that I started researching Title IX and what their office is actually supposed to do and the things that they are supposed to offer you.
And that's when I realized that maybe they weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. After the meeting, going over everything with my friend, she was looking up some information and in the Title IX handbook, it did at that time say something about community safety and making sure that no one is a danger to the community around them.
And so I do think that while they might not have been able to send him back, into sobriety. I do think that they should have understood the danger that he was to their campus. That was probably when I was at my lowest since the assault. I was feeling so hopeless and
so defeated i had such a hard time focusing on anything and it wasn't like i was thinking of the assault every second it was this constant fight or flight in my head with everything like i couldn't think i couldn't eat i couldn't sleep I didn't understand what my body was going through.
I know now my Title IX office was supposed to give me resources like going to the rape recovery center or meeting in groups. Because they didn't do that, I wasn't able to understand my feelings and what I was going through. And these are systems that are put in place to help victims and they're paid to help victims.
I was trying my best to follow every single direction that I was given from these systems and it led me nowhere. I think a lot of people have had this experience. You go to a doctor's appointment hoping to get some clarity about your health, and you leave feeling like you don't actually learn very much.
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Chapter 4: How did the Title IX office respond to Marissa's situation?
Head to superpower.com and use code SWW at checkout for $20 off your membership. After you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them, so please make sure to mention the podcast to support the show. Thank you so much. After the University of Utah meeting, I took a little bit of time, thought about my options, and I had been in contact with the detective that they put on my case.
They have a detective reach out to you maybe like the week after your ER visit. I was put in contact with Detective Smith. In our first conversations, I felt really good about her. I thought that she was going to be a really good asset for me and that she was going to be a really good detective for my case.
I spoke with her about my meeting with the University of Utah, and she kind of relayed to me that they've been having a lot of issues with the University of Utah and the way that they're reporting things. She actually told me a few times not to respond to the emails that the University of Utah was sending me because She didn't think that it was productive.
It was a few months after I had tried to report the rape to the University of Utah that I got an email from them. Basically in the email it said that they were investigating a crime and that police were involved. And if either of my perpetrators were listed below to please email back.
And if it wasn't one of those perpetrators, that they have one other one who can't be named, please respond immediately. I thought this was so interesting because now that they were under fire and that they had the heat under them from the police, they were super interested about who had raped me.
Everything that was in the email, those were the things that I was expecting to hear when I had my meeting with her. We want accountability to be taken and we want to make our campus safe. That was another realization for me that they didn't do what they were supposed to do. I reached out to my detective. She told me not to respond to this.
I spoke with the detective a lot throughout October and November. I also got in contact with an advocate from that police station. She reached out to me. I went and met with her and the advocate told me this detective is good. They never made any promises, but they told me that they did think that I had a good case.
December is when we had our meeting for me to go in and give my official statement and press charges. So I went to the police department and we sat down and we had an interview. I gave her all the information about the assault. I was there for probably an hour and a half to two hours. My mom came with me and we also had a lawyer come in. because we were unsure of our rights.
And we didn't know at this point who was on our team because of the meetings that I had had with the universities. My lawyer didn't come in. He sat outside. The detective was very reassuring to me and my mom that she was on our side and that we didn't need the lawyer in there. I was under the impression that things would just move forward from there.
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Chapter 5: What was the impact of the university's handling of Marissa's case?
I grew up LDS and so she would talk to me a lot about that because she grew up LDS and she had since left the church. She talked to me a lot about my relationship with my mom and how to handle my mom having big feelings about the assault and how to handle growing up LDS and having this happen to me.
We talked a lot about my sexuality and where I was at in my dating life and who I was dating and how was my dating life going. We talked a lot about her sexuality and when she came out. I knew a lot about her and I really did care about her and I thought she cared about me. I thought that she was making a lot of progress on my case.
I didn't understand that this was not appropriate discussion between a detective and a victim, especially because of the frequency that it was happening. She would also talk to my mom for hours about me, what she thought was best for me and what I should be doing. I remember one night specifically, I was up at the University of Utah and we were in their basketball training center.
I was there with a couple friends. I looked over and I saw Jay, the other football player who was there that night. And I remember texting her on her personal number and telling her, This is happening right now. Do I need to leave? What should I do? And I just remember her being so comforting and honestly being kind of like a mother figure explaining to me like, you don't have to leave.
You can stay. The day after I saw Jay at the facility, she actually went up to campus to meet with him and interview him because he wouldn't respond to her messages. I just felt like she was putting a lot of effort into my case and that she really cared about me and cared about the integrity of my case.
She had sent forward my rape kit to be tested and the backlog in Utah at the time was really really bad and so it took a while to go through and once it finally did go through the results weren't refined enough and so they had to send it in for a deeper test. I felt like she was my own personal Olivia Benson.
I thought throughout this whole interview process that she was doing the things that she was supposed to be doing. We got about a year into the investigation. She had done interviews with me, with my perpetrator, with Jay, with all the friends of mine who were there that night. And she had also done outreach to a lot of different people. She had a lot of information on my case.
I felt like we were really making progress. This was in the height of COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement. My detective reached out to me and she had said, hey, I am leaving the special victims unit. I'm going to a different unit. This is just a lot to be a police officer during this time. But she had said that her captain was allowing her to keep my case.
She was going to see it through to screening. This was around August that she was telling me all of this. Around September is when she told me that my case was going to be passed on to somebody else because the DNA was taking so long to come back. So I kept reaching out to her asking, can who's my new detective? Can you give me more information?
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Chapter 6: How did the detective's approach affect Marissa's experience?
And use code SWW to claim your free gift today. Thank you so much. Here's Marissa again. After we had contacted the sergeant, the sergeant called me and let me know that a new detective would be put on my case. He told me that my new detective would be the detective who was at the hospital when I got my rape kit and took my initial report. She reached out to me and we had a phone conversation.
She asked me, do you want to open this case? I'm trying to figure out details of what's going on. And I explained to her the whole history with Detective Smith. I explained that I had had all of these meetings with her. There was so much information that Detective Smith had. The new detective said, okay, I'll look into it and I'll get back to you. We waited and waited.
That's when the new detective asked to meet. My mom came with me this time and we went down to the police department. That's when she kind of explained to me that there was nothing in my case file. I'm like, what do you mean there's nothing in my case file?
And she said, when I opened your case file, all that it said was that Detective Smith had tried to reach out to you and you didn't respond and that the case was closed. In my head, I'm having this playback of everything that I had done over the last year.
All the phone calls with Detective Smith, all of the interviews she did with my friends, with the perpetrator, with the perpetrator's side of things. I'm like, what's going on? She explained that she went through all of their logs and she found my interview, my friend's interview, a couple other people who were on the football team who were interviewed.
But she said that the thing that they didn't find was my perpetrator's interview. She told me that they lost the recorded interview as well as any transcribed interview. It was nowhere to be found. She said that their logs erased after a certain time and that Detective Smith didn't put it in when she should have and it erased.
at a police station when they're doing these really important interviews. I don't understand why they would have things erase at a certain time. I know that they have kept evidence from 100 years ago and they reopened cases. So for that interview to have just gone missing makes absolutely no sense to me. This was a super important interview. It really, in my mind, took out the he said, she said.
And that's the biggest challenge that most victims face in court. He had said that we never had sex. And if you can show a pattern of lying, then obviously they're going to most likely side with the person who's told the truth from the beginning. Even though there were a lot of things that I was embarrassed about and didn't really want to tell the truth about, but I did.
We had hours and hours long conversations and none of that information is in my case file. I can't imagine what was going on in her head and why she thought that it was appropriate to A, have those conversations, B, not report them, and C, have me contact her on her private number. One chain of thought is that she's just bad at her job and she was negligent and incompetent.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of the DNA evidence in Marissa's case?
Okay. And if, like I said, usually their timeline is a week or two to do. So when we have the case completely finished, everything's ready to go, you have a bow on it, We schedule an in-person meeting with the district attorney's office. And we actually go to them and we present our case. And we say, this is what we have. This is what we don't have. This is what looks good.
This is my feelings about this. And there's forensic nurses there. There's victims' advocates. There's social workers. It's a pretty big deal. And so we come at it from all those different angles and we hash it out. And then based on the totality of that meeting, that is essentially... when the district attorney's office is like, yep, this looks good. I'm ready to file on this. Let's go.
Or they can say, really, it's one of three things. They'll say that. They'll say, okay, this looks pretty good, but we need this follow-up. Or they'll say, based on what you have, we don't feel like we have enough to move forward, so we're going to decline to prosecute this case. And so that is the meeting that usually takes about a week or two to get on their schedule.
So it really should be where today is December 1st. I don't see this going past Christmas. Oh, good. Yeah, that was our other worry with Christmas break coming. Yeah, I don't see it going past that. Okay. All right. That sounds awesome. Sure appreciate your taking the time to visit with us. Thank you so much. Okay. We sure will. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye.
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Chapter 8: What were the final steps in the legal process for Marissa?
The tentative timeline that she gave me before they even consider making a decision is four to six weeks. Okay. And that is going to come after I give them all of the Title IX paperwork. So like I said, I've already called the U. They told me they might even get that back to me today. As soon as they get it to me, I'll get over to Colleen. So I hope that I could even get that over to her today.
Okay. So I would say if you do not hear anything by the end of February, blow up my phone. Okay. But I know that sucks. Okay. But I guess, like I said, good news is they didn't outright decline it. Yeah, totally. There's not really a whole lot else, you know, that I can do for you now. It's really just whatever they decide. Okay. No, thank you so much for all of your help. Yeah.
And if I hear anything before then, obviously I will definitely let you know. But at this point, let's give you that kind of deadline where they said 460. So if you do not hear anything from me by then, then let me know. Okay. And then I'll check in with them, okay? Okay, sounds great. Thank you so much. Yep, you're very welcome. Okay, have a good day. You too, bye. Bye.
The new detective called me and she explained to me that during the screening, they didn't deny it, but they told her that she needed to get a little bit more information. So she had to go back and she had to call a few more people. She sent it back to screening and... It was so interesting.
I don't know what I was really expecting or how the conversation would go, but I never got a call from her. I got a call from somebody at the DA's office and it was a voicemail. And I remember clicking into my voicemail, listening to it and And she's basically saying, hey, I'm so-and-so from the DA's office. I'm going to be on your case for this assault.
Give me a call back when you have a minute. And so I call her back and I'm like, hi, this is Marissa. And she's like, hi, I just wanted to talk to you about your case and kind of what the next steps are. And she's giving me this whole spiel. And I stop her. I'm like, I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but are you telling me that my case made it past screening? And she's like, oh, yeah.
Did nobody call you? And I'm like, no, I've been waiting here for weeks. And I thought it probably got denied. And the new detective just didn't know how to tell me. And she's like, oh, no, it went through. And I was beyond shocked. I was prepared by the team that I had that this most likely wouldn't go forward because they didn't have his interview. I started working with the DA's office more.
I got a prosecutor on my case. I had a lot of betrayal throughout this process, but I will say that my prosecutor was one person who really, really fought for me. And still to this day, I think so highly of him. And I don't think that things would have happened the way that they did if he wasn't on my case. And so I do want to give credit where credit's due.
When I started working with him, the communication was a lot better. He let me know what was going on and he really gave me a say in what was happening. I really respected his opinion. And so when he felt like we should move in a certain direction, I trusted him with that. When I started meeting with the prosecutor, I got a hold of my police report. And it's this big file. It has documents.
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