Canadian diver charged with College of Utah dorm room rape

SALT LAKE CITY — A College of Utah diver has been arrested and charged with raping a younger girl in her dorm room throughout the first week of the college yr final fall.

Prosecutors have charged Ben Smyth, a Canadian diver in his second yr at Utah, with sodomy, sexual abuse and rape. In an indictment filed this week, detectives say Smyth went to a lady’s dorm room after confirming she was alone final August. He requested her to play “reality or dare” after which allegedly raped her whereas she resisted bodily, stated she “didn’t need to do this,” shook her head no and instructed him she was in ache.

Salt Lake County District Lawyer Sim Gill stated Smyth was arrested upon returning to the US this week.

“It’s our understanding that he’s in custody in Seattle,” Gill stated

Scott Wilding, Smyth’s legal professional, declined to touch upon the costs or whether or not he had returned to give up voluntarily or was caught when his return to the nation triggered the warrant.

The indictment, which doesn’t identify the girl, additionally says that when detectives went to serve Smyth with a protecting order to maintain him away from the girl, a roommate stated he had moved out. A non-public investigator later instructed detectives that Smyth had returned to Canada upon studying he was underneath investigation for rape.

Courtroom paperwork say when detectives interviewed Smyth, he initially denied realizing the girl however later acknowledged having intercourse together with her and that she was in ache. Detectives additionally write that Smyth’s pals described him as bragging “in regards to the variety of ladies he has intercourse with,” which he compiled into an inventory to point out others.

The College of Utah athletic division stated in a press release that Smyth was suspended from the boys’s swimming and diving staff when the college was made conscious of the allegations in February, earlier than the Pac-12 Championships. Smyth didn’t compete this yr however as a freshman took second in platform diving.

“We have been made conscious of a critical allegation involving a member of our males’s swimming and diving program. Upon being notified by the College’s Workplace of Equal Alternative of a pending investigation, Ben Smyth was instantly suspended,” the division stated.

Salt Lake County District Lawyer Sim Gill stated earlier this week after a warrant for Smyth’s arrest was issued that his workplace was pursuing any means to return him to Utah.

The diver’s arrest is at the least the second time Pac-12 swimming and diving has confronted rape allegations lately. In 2016, Stanford College swimmer Brock Turner was discovered responsible of raping a lady after two graduate college students caught him on high of an unconscious girl behind a dumpster on campus.