Marchers wept and sang anthems in Tongan as a crowd of about 200 walked behind a toddler who, only a week ago, suffered what her family described as a horrific sexual assault.
“Baby … you’re going to be OK,” said Veanna Pau’u, a kindergarten teacher and sex assault survivor who helped organize the march and vigil for the child Monday night in Liberty Park. Pau’u choked back sobs as she spoke. “We’re going to build a society and a culture that will help you heal.”
After accounts of the child’s assault swept through Pacific Islander communities both in Utah and internationally, supporters rallied in hopes of providing comfort to the child’s family and raising awareness of sexual assault.
But most were not expecting to see the little girl herself, who was released from a hospital Sunday and carried a yellow balloon as she looked curiously up from her stroller at the crowds and cameras that followed her and her family through the park.
“We wanted to come and show [that] she’s doing really well,” said her father. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify victims of sex crimes and is not publishing the names of the child or her immediate family. “Just seeing all the people — I know she can’t express it, but it’s a beautiful thing.”
Salt Lake City police were called on July 15 to a home in the Avenues, where the girl’s mother came home from work that Sunday and found the 16-month-old injured. She also found that her 36-year-old fiancé, who had been caring for the woman’s children, had died by suicide in another room of the house, police said.
Members of the child’s family have said the girl was sexually assaulted and suffered severe injuries; Salt Lake City police say they are still investigating and have not characterized the girl’s injuries except to say they were not life-threatening.
Detective Greg Wilking would not confirm how the girl received those injuries, and the case is still being investigated.
“We want to know for certain what took place,” Wilking said Monday.
Speakers at the vigil pleaded for the community to embrace all sexual violence survivors just as they embraced the child.
“What I love so much about being Tongan, is, when one is hurt, we all are hurt,” said Losaline Tukuafu, who along with Pau’u helped found the TAPU Podcast to discuss assault, domestic violence and mental illness. “When I think of my community, I think of unity.”
But sex crime survivors often feel ashamed and not taken seriously, said Lani Taholo, a social worker who has studied responses to sexual violence in Polynesian communities. Many girls and women, in particular, reported they didn’t tell their families because of attitudes she described “maumau taimi” — ”waste of time” — and “laupisi” — “Tough.”
“Gone are the days when we say to our children, ‘Maumau taimi.’ ‘Laupisi,’” Taholo said tearfully.
Tukuafu said the TAPU team organized the vigil to channel the community’s feeling of solidarity with the child’s family as a healing force for all sex assault survivors.
TAPU Podcast hosted the event, along with the Utah Pacific Islander Civic Engagement Coalition and Watchtower Cafe.
“We really do appreciate the community,” said Salesi Havili, the child’s uncle, as teens passed around colorful cards for marchers to write supportive notes to the child and place in the jar. Members of a motorcycle club revved their engines and accompanied the crowd around the park, and marchers sang choruses of “Ofa i Api” — “Love at home.”
“We never anticipated something like this vigil going on,” Havili said.
The case likely would have remained private if not for social media reaction to the man’s obituary. It said he “died peacefully” and had been “looking forward to dancing through life with [the mother] and her three beautiful children.”
People posting on Facebook, Reddit and elsewhere were outraged. The obituary was posted and later deleted from the websites of the Standard-Examiner, Legacy.com and Leavitt’s Mortuary. A copy of the Standard-Examiner’s web page was preserved in an internet archive.
A spokesman for the mortuary said the man was buried in a private service. His family did not respond to a request for comment, conveyed via the mortuary.
