On Nov. 19, The Salt Lake Tribune published an editorial, “BYU should train students that sexual assault victims have no need to repent.” I completely agree with the title, as sexual assault victims have absolutely no need to repent. Yet, as a forensic nurse and researcher, I have concerns about other messages within the editorial.
First, the editorial implied that Brigham Young University students who were victims of sexual assault met with their bishop to “repent” of the sexual assault. This is an inaccurate assumption. The BYU Campus Climate Survey revealed that while most students (64 percent) did not report incidents of sexual assault to any formal source, 26 percent of students reported the unwanted sexual contact to their ecclesiastical leader (e.