Utah rape data inflated?

A new national study reports alarming statistics about the number of women in Utah who have been raped. But some are questioning whether the statistics are accurate.

One in five women in Utah has been the victim of rape at some point in her life, according to a new report from the South Carolina-based National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center. That puts Utah's rape rate second only to Alaska's.

According to the report, more than 157,000 women in Utah have been raped, including more than 64,000 in Salt Lake County, more than 26,000 in Utah County and more than 16,000 in Davis County. But the authors of the report say the numbers are conservative and the actual number of rapes is probably much higher.

"I realized we were bad but not that bad," said Jamee Roberts, executive director of the Rape Recovery Center in Salt Lake City. "But (the study) really doesn't surprise me. This is a public health crisis."

What does surprise her, however, is the number of people who have seen the report and are questioning the validity of the statistics.

"No one ever questions heart disease rates or traffic accident rates. This information was gathered in the same way, yet no one questions that that many people have heart disease," Roberts said.

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Ziebert, supervisor of the department's sex crimes unit, has not seen the report and does not know what formula the authors used to come up with their figures. However, he said the numbers they are reporting are extremely disproportionate to the number of cases he sees come across his desk.

"It's a misperception of numbers," he said.

Ziebert acknowledges that not all rape cases are reported to police. Nevertheless, the statistics from the study are still suspect, he said.

"I have serious doubts about those statistics. It just seems way beyond what we see," Ziebert said. "I find the numbers bogus. I can't comment on the experts (who did the study), I can only comment on what I see on a daily basis."

Data for the report were based on statistics collected from a 1989 National Women's Study survey, a 1995 survey from the group National Violence Against Women and 2000 census figures. Combined, the two surveys contacted 12,008 women nationally. From those surveys, the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center estimated that 13.4 percent of adult women in the United States had been the victims of rape, said Dr. Dean Kilpatrick, co-author of the report.