Something Was Wrong - S25 Ep14: My Own Personal Olivia Benson

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

*Content Warning: grooming, abuse of power, institutional betrayal, sexual violence, on-campus violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence, sexual assault, and rape. Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources   SWW Sticker Shop!: https://brokencyclemedia.com/sticker-shop SWW S25 Theme Song & Artwork: The S25 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart instagram.com/okaynotgreat/ The S25 theme song is a cover of Glad Rag’s U Think U from their album Wonder Under, performed by the incredible Abayomi instagram.com/Abayomithesinger. The S25 theme song cover was produced by Janice “JP” Pacheco instagram.com/jtooswavy/ at The Grill Studios in Emeryville, CA instagram.com/thegrillstudios/ Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com  IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast  Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me  IG: instagram.com/lookieboo *Sources: -“Here’s an Updated Timeline of the Slaying of University of Utah Student Lauren McCluskey and Reform That Has Followed.” The Salt Lake Tribune, 26 Oct. 2018, www.sltrib.com/news/2018/10/26/timeline-extortion/

The Bell Air Direct app includes crash assist, which detects an accident the moment it happens, and even offers you emergency assistance at the tap of a button. Okay, but what if I don't have an accident? Well, just keep on, keeping on. Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. 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 research. sources, 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 in 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. You think you know me, you don't know. me well at all. You don't know anybody till you had 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 led us into this little room.

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 know 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. Me and my friend who was there with me, we both noticed that and thought that was so strange. She kept telling me, you don't need to say it. At the very beginning of the meeting, I did say his name, not his last name, just his first name briefly. And I just think that's really important to note for later. I repeated to her, this was one of their student athletes, and that he had a past of substance abuse issues.

I remember asking her, what are your procedures? What can you do to help? If I decide to start an investigation on him through the school, what is your job? She explained two different scenarios. The first one was we investigate what happened internally. We talked to the other athletes that were there. And we just get everyone's input. She opened a big pamphlet that had different arrows to all of the steps of the investigation process.

She points to each one of the little lines on the timeline and says, here's where we introduce the case, here's where we investigate, here's where we bring it to these people, and here's where we come to a decision. She explained this process as super draining and sometimes doesn't even end in a resolution after all of the effort that is put in to the investigation. After I'm hearing that, I'm like, wow, this process seems like the worst thing ever.

She said that victims in the past have talked about how this is a really hard process. She's explaining it as this almost impossible thing to do. And then she pulls out another little paper, and it's just one sheet of paper, and it says alternate resolution. She explained this as, I get to write SL a letter, and I get to tell him how he hurt me. And this is going to affect me forever. And then she said, if he chooses to, he can write a letter back, taking accountability, saying sorry, explaining his actions, things like that. Then we can come to a resolution together.

He gets to choose if he wants to write you back. If he wants to abide by any of these guidelines, she was saying some of the resolutions are giving him more education, putting him in more classes so he doesn't make mistakes like this again because he's more educated. 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.

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.

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 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. On October 22nd, 2018, University of Utah student and track athlete Lauren McCluskey was murdered in a parking lot outside her campus residence hall. In the 10 days leading up to her death, Lauren repeatedly contacted both campus and local police in an effort to seek help, reporting escalating concerns about stalking and abuse.

As the Salt Lake Tribune reported in 2018, quote, of Utah student athlete Lauren McCluskey was fatally shot outside her dorm in 2018 by a man she had dated. Her murder exposed serious flaws in the school's responses to intimate partner violence, and continuing revelations have spurred widespread reform, end quote. They had to shape up, and so that's why my experience, I was so shocked by it. 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 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. Maybe you're told everything looks fine, but you still have questions about things like energy levels, sleep, or nutrition. That's part of the idea behind superpower. Superpower gives you a much more detailed look at what's going on in your body,

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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. 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 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. I didn't know what to expect as far as if he would get arrested. She didn't really explain that process to me a lot. What she told me is that she would meet with all of the other people who were present the night of the rape. This is what took some time.

The people on his side were not being very responsive to the detective. She reached out to them multiple times. Not a lot of them got back to her. SL. He was willing to have an interview. Detective Smith gave me kind of an overview of what happened in their interview. And he basically said that him and I never had sex and that we did other things, but once it got to when we were going to have sex, that I told him no and he stopped. And he thought it was really weird that my demeanor had changed really quickly, but he stopped. That was a huge piece of information because later the DNA would show differently. I really do feel like

SL's interview was my smoking gun. Here's Sarah. I went in for an interview with Detective Smith and explained my whole side of the story. We just went through the whole night and I just told her everything that I remembered and knew. It just felt like a pretty basic interview. Did Detective Smith or anyone else at the police department ever follow up with you? No. That was the only person that I had talked to. What signs of trauma did you see in the days and weeks that followed the assault as somebody who knew Marissa well? Marissa is still affected by it to this day. She is a super nonchalant, positive, bubbly person by nature.

We definitely saw that dimmed. She went through a lot of anxiety, depression, just not even wanting to leave the house as much. She's a very social person. We would go hang out every weekend, and we definitely saw her social life suffer for sure. Here's Marissa. It was January 2nd of 2020 that my detective reached out to me. from a different phone number. And she had told me that it was her personal phone number and to contact her on there.

I didn't think anything of this. I thought we were on the same page. And I felt very comforted and reassured by this detective. It started very professional. Once we started communicating on her personal number, we started having longer conversations. We probably talked like once every other week for an hour. Sometimes it was weekly. She started talking to me about different things.

She started talking to me about religion. 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 last. 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, who's my new detective? Can you give me more information? and she was just kind of being a little bit spotty with communication. We got to the end of September and my mom had kind of had it. And so she called the police captain at the special victims unit. She said, we really like this detective.

We're hoping to get another good detective. Can you tell me where her case is at? And the captain asked my mom my name, goes into his files and is looking. He says, so your daughter is Marissa? And she said yes. And he said, okay, so is she wanting to open a. investigation on this. He was on speakerphone. My mom and my mouth just dropped. We were like, what do you mean? Do I want to open my case? We've been doing this for a full year. We have all these

interviews. And you can tell he starts to like be super confused. He starts stuttering over his words. He's like, uh, let me call you back. We'll figure this out. So about an hour later, he calls back and he's super apologetic. He's telling my mom and I, we are so sorry. We're going to fix this. We're going to figure this out. We don't know how this happened, but your daughter's case has been closed since October of 2019, which is two weeks after my assault happened. We were super confused. So we said, yes, we want to open it. Had my mom not called the police sergeant when my case was in limbo, the sergeant would have never known that this was going on. And my case probably would have just gotten lost, I had my mom advocating for me. And at this time, I had someone else advocating for me.

And had I not had that, I probably would have given up multiple times. And I know that so many people don't have that. And so that's what really upsets me about the justice system and the process that I went through and that I know so many other people go through. I know that I was going through so much emotional turmoil and that was really the last thing that I thought that I needed to be doing. I should have been able to put this in the hands of people who are getting paid to do this and I should have been able to trust that they would do their jobs correctly. A lot of people think quitting vaping or smoking is only about nicotine. But for many people, it's also about the habit itself. The hand-to-mouth motion, the pause during the day, just having

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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. I'm going 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'm. 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 erase 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, 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. The other part of me thinks that she might have done something nefarious. I, of course, don't want to believe that, but I can't help but think that's because she knew

that it was inappropriate and that she didn't want evidence of our contact on her work phone. The new detective. The words that she said to me was she's essentially starting from square one. My mom had said to the new detective, how does this happen? Where is Detective Smith?

What's going on? And she's reassuring my mom. You know, nothing nefarious is going on. We lost the information and she was very, very careful with her words, careful about how much she was going to take blame or put blame on the police force. At this point, we really felt like she was our only person that we could talk to about this and the person that was going to be responsible for continuing my case. And so we didn't really say much to her.

We just said, can we just keep this thing moving? She was very professional about everything. After this happened, she reached back out to SL and to his lawyer, and he refused to have a new interview. During this time, what we're waiting for is the DNA to come back from the more in-depth test. I'm communicating a little bit with the new detective, and I'm kind of seeing what the relationship between detective and victim is supposed to actually look like. Her job is to investigate the case.

It's not to be my friend and comfort me the way that Detective Smith had. I could tell that she was anxious to get this show on the road. I don't know if it's because the sergeant was putting a lot of pressure on her because this was mishandled and I know that they know that as well. A few months after I got in contact with the new detective, I also got in contact with a place called the Utah Crime Victim Advocates. And this is where I met someone named Alex. she was my advocate and I genuinely don't think that I would have made it through a lot of this process without her.

When I was talking about how my mom advocated a lot for me, Alex also was advocating for me. She came with me to all of my appointments. She had really hard conversations for me and she was someone along with my prosecutor that's really special to me in this experience because of just how above and beyond she went for me and so many other victims. Her caseload was insane. You can't even believe it. She did her best to stay on top of everything. She was always very present when she had a discussion with me. I always felt like I was the only person on her mind, and that's really rare in these circumstances. Finally, my DNA ended up coming back from the more in-depth test, and DNA is kind of interesting. It's not exactly how you see it in the movies. It's not a 100% match or not. Basically, in my case, the way that DNA is looked at is the perpetrator cannot be ruled out.

When a lab says someone cannot be ruled out, it doesn't really sound convincing. But in forensic science, that's pretty condemning. They don't give percentages like on TV, but in reality, the odds of another random person fitting that profile are often in the millions or even billions to one. Two of the samples that were the closest match to him were the furthest up my vagina. and one of them was a semen sample and one of them was a saliva sample. So the semen sample, meaning that it couldn't have just gotten up there from doing other things. This was really big for me in my case because it showed that we did, in fact, have sex like he was denying in his initial interview.

This really helped my case if we were to go to court. The next step in the process is to send my case forward to screening. How screening was explained to me is that there are people in a room, there's lawyers and police and nurses and doctors, and they all look at all the evidence that the detective has found. They go through it and they see if this case has enough evidence to go forward to the court system. We were just waiting on the new detective to interview a couple more people. As Marissa waited for her case to progress to the screening stage, the new detective remains. in communication with her and her family.

Here's a portion of a phone call between Marissa's mom and the newly assigned detective to her case, Tiffany Parker. When I met with you guys in the office, Marissa gave me some information that I didn't have before. I didn't have the names of his previous girlfriend and I didn't have the names of other people that were previous at the party. And those things do take time to try and get those people

to communicate with me and try to get those people to, return phone calls or return emails or return whatever. Right. And as I'm trying to track people down, I did send her a text that it would probably be a couple more weeks. And so additionally, I'm on the district attorney schedule. So it's going to be up to them once I submit my case.

It's usually only a week or two weeks that they schedule me out for the end of the year. So what I don't want to have happened is I don't want to present them with a case. and say, also this person, this person, and this person, we're at this party, and then have them be like, well, did you try to talk to them? So they're just going to ask me at that point to go out and to try and track them down. So if I can go to them with the most complete case possible, then that's going to look better and it's going to expedite her process. So it's really all trying to do. Okay. And that sounds awesome. I guess Marisa had given those names to Detective Fribe, but she must not have put them in her notes. Literally all I had from Detective

was multiple. I had four different reports that said like she had talked to Marissa on the phone. I'm not trying to throw her under the bus, but that's literally all I had was four entries in Marissa's case file that said, I talked to Marissa. We arranged an interview. I talked to Marissa. I talked to her on the phone. Like literally each report was like four sentences. And even the report that she gave that weekend that that your sergeant said she had to get stuff written down did did that didn't have any

any it had the transcript so what she did was she transcribed her interviews so that was just from her memory then well she had everything except for sione so her interview with marissa she had recorded her interview with julian she had recorded so the only one that was from her memory was That's the only one I don't have a recording of. But she did complete a transcription based on her best recollection, yes. Okay. But the little pieces of information that Marissa gave me when you two came in and talked to me about the other people that were at the party or about how

said something later to someone else about how he lied to the police, like that wasn't included in that because that wasn't part of the interview that she transcribed. So that is all information that I just got from you guys. this fall that I've been trying to work on to get this close. Okay. So I completely understand why you guys are frustrated because this case should have been closed a year ago. However, please be patient with me because essentially when this case was assigned to me, when I contacted you guys in September or whatever it was, for me was essentially like working a new case.

Right, right. And I'm so sorry that happened to you. we're really relieved that you got picked since you knew Marissa from the initial, you know, hospital visit. And we appreciate everything you're doing. We're just, it's just tough, you know. I'm sure it is. And I'm sure. And I promise you this case will be in front of the district attorney before the end of the year. And it's as simple as I called this person three or four times. They didn't call me back. And then that's something that they are okay with. But that's going to look a lot better than, Oh, yeah, she told me about someone else who's at the party, but I just wanted to get this turned in, so I never tried to contact them. At that point, they're just going to be like, okay, we're holding off on this until everything's done.

That's going to just put it on the back burner with them, and I don't want to do that. So I want to have every, especially where we don't have his recorded interview. We do have good DNA evidence at this point, so that's good. We are so, so close. But I do need just a little bit more time to just make sure everything is really squared away so that when it does get in front of the they're more inclined to pursue it. Okay. That's great. I really appreciate your taking our phone call. Okay. And I'm so sorry she's upset. Please tell her she can reach out to me.

I'm not going to take anything personally. I know you guys have been through the ringer. So if she has questions or concerns, I hate texting. I've told her before on text. Sometimes I'm terrible at it. So any questions or concerned, she's absolutely welcome to call me. Okay. Okay. Well, and this has helped a lot. When she starts talking about, she just starts crying. So this was easier for. And as I said, we're grateful for you. It just feels like we have someone on our side. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I will prefer let her know. So I'll probably give it another week or so to try and get a hold of these people. And then I'll go ahead and file. 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. That's going to. Yeah, I don't see it going past that. Okay. All right.

That sounds awesome. Okay. Sure appreciate your taking the time to visit with us. Thank you so much. I'll be much. Do you guys need anything? Okay. We sure will.

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Thank you so much. Shortly after the prior call, Marissa heard about the results of her case's first screening via the following phone call. Hello? Hey, Marissa, it's Detective Parker. Hi, how are you? I'm okay. How are you? Good.

Good. Hey, so I have the student of school screening and they did give me a little bit of call. I've already started on that. The only follow-up that they gave me was to contact the University of Utah and get all of the information for your Title IX from the U of you. So I've already started on that. I've got a request into them to get all of that information. So that was the only follow-up that they gave me. So that's the giving.

I've already got that started, so hopefully I should have that pretty quick. The bad news is remember how I told you that there would be three options. Yeah. So there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that the case has not been declined. The bad news is that they did not just outright accept it either, which, to be honest, I wasn't expecting. So they did kind of give me the third option that we discussed, which is where they take it and they discuss it amongst themselves, and they decide amongst themselves what they want to do. The hard part is that takes time.

Yeah. And so, unfortunately, I don't have a straight-up answer for you today. Okay. It's going to be up to the district attorney's office, what they decide. And so the really good news is that they haven't declined it. They are going to take a look at it and they're going to decide, which is good. They didn't say that that's too many issues. We're just not even going to consider it.

They are going to consider it. But unfortunately, I know you've already been more than patient and you've already have to wait a long time and you have to wait just a little bit longer. But that is kind of the answer that I have for you. So I think to be really honest with you, I'm not going to try to spin it. That's just kind of where I'm out as bad news is I don't have a straight answer for you today. Good news is they did not outright decline it. Yeah.

They are going to take a look at it and they are going to consider taking it. Okay. It just sucks that you have to wait a little bit longer to find out. Yeah. The attorney that screened your case today, she's a freaking bulldog. I like her a lot. She's actually one of my favorite attorneys over there. The tentative timeline that she gave me before they even consider making a decision is four to six weeks.

And that is going to come after I give them all of the title line 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. But I guess, like I said, good news is they didn't outright the client. 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, if you did 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. Yeah, 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 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 credits do.

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 tons and tons of pages in it.

And I remember flipping through it, I got to visually see what the new detective saw. My case file was just a few one-sentence entries from Detective Smith. The first one says, I called Marissa. She did not answer. I left a message requesting she returned my call. A few days later, there's another entry that says, says, I spoke with Marissa in reference to her case. Marissa said she was a little reluctant to move forward with the investigation at this time.

Marissa stated she would inform me of her decision next week after her counseling appointment. Then a few days later, on October 3rd, it says, I called Marissa and I left a message requesting she returned my call. The last entry was on October 8th, and she said, I called Marissa's cell phone and it went straight to voicemail. I called Marissa's mother, and I left a message requesting. she informed Marissa to call me. I mailed a letter to Marissa's home address

informing her I was closing her case. However, it could be reopened at any time. And that was October 8th, 2019. When she spoke with my mama on October 8th, we did make the decision because we had spoken with an advocate through the police department that we were going to press charges. She very much knew that we were moving forward, and she put case closed in my case file anyways.

And there was no other entries from October 8th, 2019. until October 6, 2020. So almost exactly a year later. And during that year was when all of this communication was going on. And when she switched me to her personal phone number, none of that was entered into my case file. When the new detective got my case, she entered every single thing into my case file.

Every single text that we sent, every single communication that we had, it was all listed in there. That's how it's meant to be. Next time on something was wrong. I said, if we do go to trial, can my old detective come and speak? And the prosecutor said that she was no longer part of the police force. She's resigned and she's actually left the country.

She's living in Croatia now. Let me be crystal clear. There was not consent. I want to make sure that everyone understands that. Going forward, please do not read the sentences, any sort of license to engage in. any statements about what you believe may have happened. The following is University of Utah's reply to our request for comment. Quote,

Utah Valley University student Marissa Root reported being sexually assaulted by a University of Utah football player at an off-campus party in 2019. After Root made an initial report to the University of Utah's office of equal opportunity, staff repeatedly reached out to her to try to ascertain the name of the purpose. When the University of Utah learned the alleged perpetrator was football player Ceyone Lund, he was suspended and removed from the team. Lund pled guilty and was sentenced in 2023. This is a tragic case with far-reaching implications for everyone involved. We hope Marissa and the people who love and support her find opportunities for healing from

this traumatic experience. The university remains committed to engaging in work to prevent violence from happening in the first place and fostering a trauma-informed community where students feel safe, supported, and heard. As Judge David Barlow noted in his March 3rd, 2025 ruling, quote, the university had no involvement or control over the party at the football player's parents' private residence. Additionally, reliance on the 2019 player's policy manual's general instruction that football players should treat women with respect both on and off-campus, does not mean that the university has control over the context

of virtually every off-campus location in which one or more of its athletes attend a private party. Because this record does not supply the required nexus between the university and the off-campus party at a private residence, the university cannot be liable under Title IX, end quote. Utah Valley University responded to our request for comment with the following statement. Quote, Tiffany, in compliance with privacy laws and institutional policy, the university does not comment publicly on individual cases handled through the Title IX process, as those proceedings are confidential to protect the privacy and rights of all parties involved.

The safety and well-being of our campus community remain our highest priorities, end quote. Thank you so much to each and every survivor and guest for sharing their experiences with us. And thank you for listening. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production created and executively produced by Tiffany Reese. Thank you endlessly to our team. Associate producer, Amy B. Chessler, social media marketing manager, Lauren Barkman, graphic artist Sarah Stewart, and audio engineers Becca High and Stephen Wack.

Marissa and Travis at WME, Audio Boom, and our legal and security partners. Thank you so much to the incredibly talented Abiyomi Lewis for this season's gorgeous cover of Gladrag's original song, You Think You, from their album, Wonder Under. Thank you to music producer Janice J.P. Pacheco for their work on this cover recorded at the Grill Studios in Emoryville, California. Find all artist's socials linked in the episode notes to support and hear more. If you'd like to share your story with us, please head to Something Was Wrong.com. If you would like to help support the show, you can subscribe and listen ad free on Apple Podcasts, purchase a sticker from our sticker shop at brokencyclemedia.com, share the podcast with a loved one, or leave us a review. Want to stay up to date with us? Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at

at Something Was Wrong podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. friends.