What Does Garbage Have In Common With Victims Of Sexual Assault?

by Travis Mateer

There is a problem that trash shares with sexual assault victims and that problem is the problem of JURISDICTION. For trash generated by “urban camps”, the question of jurisdiction is mainly driven by cost. For victims of sexual assault, the question of jurisdiction is much thornier because the cost isn’t just financial; there’s a social cost that is very difficult to quantify when the topic of how to address claims of sexual violence are made, especially when the jurisdiction is the University of Montana.

Before purchasing a pre-rolled marijuana cigarette, I was on campus yesterday handing out handbills with my game-poem on the back. That’s when I saw an issue of the Kaimin with this headline blasted on the cover:

The gist of the story is that recent claims of rape reported by a female college student didn’t result in an actual case within our criminal justice system. Instead, the challenge of jurisdiction apparently pin-balled this alleged victim between University law enforcement and City law enforcement, adding trauma to the woman’s experience. From the link (emphasis mine):

University of Montana police sergeant Scott Brodie took notes, but told Kroll nothing needed to come of it. Kroll later called Brodie to ask for advice on if she should move forward, and Brodie forwarded her a UMPD detective’s information. She wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that’s what officially kicked off the start of a months-long back-and-forth of interviews with multiple organizations, like UM’s Title IX office and UMPD.  Over and over, she was asked to tell her story. 

It was painful, and she thought of giving up, but one thought kept echoing in her mind: “He could do that to someone else. He will do something to someone else.”

After visiting the hospital, she connected with another student who said the same man had raped her, and they planned to go to the police together. The other student ultimately chose not to. According to previous Kaimin reporting, the man was banned from campus and was the subject of multiple other reports, including a fondling incident reported in August 2022 and a report where three other students alleged he threatened them with a weapon “on the basis of protected class.” 

In June 2023, nine months after the assault, Kroll heard from Lead Deputy County Attorney for Special Victims Unit Prosecution Ryan Mickelson, who was working on taking her case to court.

But she had no case. He said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove her assailant knew she did not consent to his actions.

This isn’t the only pairing of victims I’m aware of without official cases AFTER reporting allegations of sexual assault, and the perpetrator in THAT pair of alleged assaults ALSO has an extensive criminal history of violence, but charging those cases in court could have reflected poorly on Lowell Hochhalter, the chaplain of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office and president of the LifeGuard Group, a non-profit propped up by our Governor to ostensibly HELP victims of human trafficking escape their situations.

Without a clear path to justice, victims are forced to do other things, like tell their story to a university newspaper or local blogger in order to raise the alarm that, post-Krakauer, Missoula is NO SAFER than we were BEFORE the book was written about our criminal justice system and its lack of prosecuting sexual assault cases.

Here’s the letter I published on January 1st, 2022, in a stupid attempt to get this community to give a shit about what was STILL NOT HAPPENING in their supposedly reformed criminal justice system. Why stupid? Maybe I can answer that more fully after my own legal issue is hopefully resolved next month.

After campus I took a stroll and smoked that joint by the river. Was I feeling personally trolled at this point? Well, when you get stoned by the river, then find your name weirdly spray-painted on a stump, yes, you start feeling a little paranoid.

I did my best to ignore this weird signage and continued about my day, but the day just kept providing more and more opportunities to get triggered and pissed off, like when Virgil and I entered the Missoula County Courthouse to attend the Commissioner meeting.

Was it the proclamation about April being sexual assault month that got me? Yep, so I got up from my seat and approached the microphone to make a public comment.

Commissioner Strohmaier must have been confused about the timing of my comment Because he clarified I was only to comment on the proclamation. YES, COMMISSIONER, said I with my loud voice, it’s the proclamation I want to comment on.

When the comment finally gets posted I’ll clip it and publish it here, probably Sunday, so you can see how quickly I become humorless when our elected officials use virtue-signaling WORDS, like each and every one of their stupid fucking proclamations.

Since just writing this post is pissing me off, I’m going to wrap this up so I can continue promoting my ECLIPSE THEIR BULLSHIT event around town on this sunny-looking first Friday in Zoom Town. If you’d like to help, a financial donation is a GREAT way to assist my work, so consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF).

Thanks for reading!