These Utahns say they experienced ‘ritual’ abuse — and urge legislators to make it a crime

They say they were ritually abused for years, and that people have doubted or dismissed their experiences.

On Wednesday, several Utahns asked a legislative committee to believe them — by approving a bill which would make “ritual child abuse” a crime in Utah.

Kimberli Raya Koen told the House Judiciary Committee that she was trafficked into a family that ritually abused her for more than two decades. As she sat before the lawmakers, she told them about the abuse she says she went through and the deep traumatization it has caused her — at times leading her to try to end her own life.

“I see the light and I have fought to be in this chair, to be in this moment,” she told the committee, “to have a chance to say this is real and this is happening.”

Rep. Ken Ivory has proposed HB196, which would define the crime of “ritual child abuse” and its penalty, of up to 15 years in prison. The proposed legislation also would allow a judge to sentence a person to life without parole if they sexually abuse a child “as part of a ritual or of a training or practice to perform a ritual.”

Ivory’s proposed bill defines “ritual” as “an event or act or a series of events or acts marked by specific actions, gestures, or words, designed to commemorate, celebrate, or solemnize a particular occasion or significance in a religious, cultural, social, institutional, or other context.”

It further describes a long list of actions which would constitute “ritual” child abuse, to include: causing a child to witness the torture or mutilation of an animal, forcing a child to consume human blood, forcing a child to enter into a coffin or open grave containing human remains, binding or confining a child or forcing a young person to intake drugs or hallucinogens.

Koen told the committee that she experienced all that was listed in Ivory’s bill during the time she was abused.

Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith spoke in favor of the bill, telling the committee that he began investigating a high-profile “ritual sex abuse” case two years ago, which Ivory noted netted 130 tips from potential victims.

Smith’s investigation became embroiled in politics after then-Utah County Attorney David Leavitt accused him of dredging up an old, unverified witness statement that accused Leavitt and 14 others of “cannibalizing young children” and participating in a “ritualistic” sex ring. While Smith denied that his investigation had anything to do with politics, the bizarre allegations hung over the final weeks of the county attorney race and Leavitt lost his reelection bid.

Many of the types of behavior that Ivory defines in his proposed legislation as “ritual child abuse” are detailed in allegations made in the 151-page statement that named Leavitt. Prosecutors have charged two people in connection with that investigation: An ex-therapist named David Hamblin and his ex-wife Roselle Stevenson, who have been charged with abusing a girl in the 1980s who lived in their neighborhood, where Leavitt also lived. Hamblin also faces charges of allegedly sexually assaulting a boy during therapy sessions.

Smith told the legislative committee Wednesday that he’s been publicly attacked and ridiculed for taking on the case, including people making memes of him and posting them online.

“I can sit before you today and say, without a doubt, these things do happen,” he said. “I believe they’re happening, I believe they have happened.”

Smith said his office didn’t seek out the legislation, but does support it. Ivory said he brought the bill after a constituent reached out to him. That woman, Cara Baldree, held a photo of herself as a young child as she told the committee that she was ritually abused beginning when she was six years old. She said that what has happened to her and others was more severe than other types of child sexual abuse — and the law should reflect that, she said.

“It’s so heinous,” she said. “And adding any ritualistic ceremonial components, that psychological component alone is devastating.”

Some lawmakers questioned whether creating a new crime was necessary, or if went too far and could possibly criminalize other religious activity that many Utahns are more familiar with.

Rep. Nelson Abbott gave the example of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ tradition of having teenagers recreate the trek that Mormon pioneers took in coming to Utah. Recounting his own experience leading a group of teenagers in a trek, he questioned whether it would be considered “ritual child abuse” that they required the youths to skip breakfast one day — because the law prohibits withholding food from a child as part of a religious ritual.

But Ivory pushed back, saying the bill also requires that the action cause bodily harm or psychological harm.

“This isn’t a trek … or fasting for a meal,” he said. “This is ritual type of abuse.”

Rep. Brian King noted that physical and sexual abuse are already illegal, and questioned whether the legislation was needed. He said that he wanted more quantification and data that showed ritual abuse was a widespread problem before he could support the bill.

“I am not there on the ritual abuse angle,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m never going to get there, but I want more information.”

But King was the only dissenting vote. Ivory’s bill passed out of the committee favorably, and now goes to the full House for a vote. It has yet to be heard in the Senate —with a little more than a week to go during the Legislative session ends.

As Rep. Kera Birkeland made the motion to move the bill to the full House, she began to cry as she told the alleged victims who spoke that she had no idea this type of abuse was happening in Utah.

“We believe you,” she told them. “And we see you.”