Rape Survivor Convenes Own Grand Jury After Prosecutors Refuse Her Case For 3 Years

Rape survivor convenes own grand jury after prosecutors refused to pursue a sex-crime charge as she did not verbally withdraw her consent.

A 22-year-old survivor from Kansas, United States of America alleged that she was raped by her classmate in 2018. She claimed that the consensual sex with the accused Jared Stolzenburg turned into assault when he began strangling her. Due to the alleged strangulation, she was unable to say “stop” and could not withdraw her consent verbally.

Since the survivor was unable to verbally withdraw her consent, local prosecutors believed that the case would not amount to rape charges. Due to this, the local prosecutors refused to take up her case for three years.

In response, she invoked an 1887 frontier law of the US to convene a grand jury after she acquired a certain number of signatures in support. The frontier law is only applicable in five states in the US. Smith decided to convene her own grand jury after her mother received advice from retired detective Justin Boardman.

The rape survivor convened her own grand jury through a process of collecting almost 329 signatures. She said that while it was hard to keep retelling her story, she continued because “I knew that what I was doing was going to make a difference one way or another.”

During a court hearing, the survivor said that it started off with mutual consent, the accused Stolzenburg allegedly began slapping and strangling her. “He would strangle me for 20 to 30 seconds at a time, and I would begin to lose consciousness. When he would release his hands from my neck, the only thing I could do was gasp for air,” she said. She then claimed that she thought that “he was going to kill me and the only way I was going to leave that room was in a body bag.”

After her parents met McPherson County Attorney Gregory Benefiel, he asked to speak with her and told her that it was no rape. Benefiel refused to file the charges.

The first petition was rejected and her second petition was accepted but delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The accused was charged with aggravated battery and received two years’ probation.

The hearing for the grand jury convened by the survivor has been scheduled for September 29, 2021.