The Sick Reality of Sex Crimes Reform in Utah

A Judge Who Raped, And The Aftermath For Victims

In 1981, 16 year old Terry Mitchell was a witness in felony murder case, the federal prosecutor was Richard Roberts.  Robert was prosecuting Joseph Paul Franklin, a white supremacist who murdered two black joggers in Salt Lake City, and Franklin survived the attack.   According to Mitchell, Roberts raped her nearly every single day during Franklin’s trial.   Roberts’s response to the $25 million lawsuit filed by Mitchell was simple:  he’d had “a bad lapse in judgment.”

There was no illegality, Roberts claimed, because he didn’t start the relationship with his 16 year old witness until after the trial and guilty verdict against Franklin.   Roberts allegedly told Mitchell that if she went public with her allegations, Franklin’s life sentence would be overturned, and the man who killed two of her friends and injured her would go free.   

Mitchell claimed that sexual abuse was a part of her childhood, as she was raped and abused by her mother’s stepfather as a toddler, and she had been raped two months before Franklin attempted to murder her and killed two of her friends in front of her.   During the lead up to her testimony, Roberts obtained Mitchell’s life story, including the disclosures of her lifelong sexual abuse, and he allegedly used that information to rape and abuse Mitchell.   Mitchell was to testify against the man who raped her two months beforehand shortly after she was shot and her friends were killed.