Estimated read time: 8-9 minutes
BOUNTIFUL — Four years after a dozen women told various Utah law enforcement agencies they were raped by the same man, a judge has sentenced him to five more years in prison in a case involving three survivors.
Joshua Homer, 28, is already serving a 0-to-5-year prison sentence for a sex crime against a 16-year-old girl. Now, he'll serve at least five more years for raping three women when they were teenagers.
"This is not a case where there could have been any confusion that these victims were not consenting to sexual activity," Judge Rita Cornish said as she addressed Homer in court Monday. "I think that this is a particularly depraved crime. There was no confusion here. It was just simply overpowering these victims to take what Mr. Homer wanted."
Judge Cornish handed down the recommended prison term for the single, first-degree felony charge Homer pleaded guilty to in the case. Five other felony counts of rape and object rape, as well as three counts of forcible sexual abuse, were dismissed by prosecutors as part of a plea deal, however, the deal allowed all three victims to have their voices heard at sentencing.
The judge did deviate from part of the plea deal by not allowing Homer's new sentence to run concurrently with the sentence he's currently serving. Instead, she ordered the sentence to start once his current sentence was finished.
Homer's sentence comes more than a year after a KSL's Failure to Protect Investigation began with an in-depth examination of Homer's criminal history, finding crimes against women and girls spanning a decade but no prison time. The investigative series exposed gaps at every level of Utah's criminal justice system.
'No amount of years will change the hurt he has caused'
The survivors in the case each submitted a statement that was read by a victim advocate during Monday's sentencing hearing before Judge Cornish issued her ruling. All three wrote of immense psychological trauma and years of pain, depression and anxiety.
"I could have dreamed of more for myself," wrote one of the women, who was just 15 years old at the time of her rape. "I would have been happy if Josh hadn't taken all those things away from me. As a kid I didn't have the strength and Josh knew that, but now I do. And I deserve justice for all the time he took away from me that I can never get back. We all do."
A second victim wrote, "Josh Homer is a serial rapist, and I wanted to share my story to keep other women safe. He is a serial rapist with no understanding of how much damage he has caused me or any of these women. He is a threat to the public."
The third victim described being left feeling powerless after her assault.
"It makes me angry that someone made me feel that way. I'm usually so strong and I've always thought that in a dangerous situation my response would be to fight," she wrote. "I believed I would fight and I didn't. I froze. And that affects me every day."
Rape myths
At Homer's sentencing, Davis County Prosecutor Matthew Hansen noted the case challenges several of society's myths and misconceptions about sexual assault.
Homer was not a stranger to his victims. Instead of fighting back, the survivors reported that they froze, a common but often misunderstood trauma response. And they didn't report the assaults to law enforcement right away.
"He used force. He used intimidation. He used manipulation to cause them to really be overcome with fear," Hansen said. "And then he took advantage of that fear. He raped them."
One woman wrote in her victim impact statement, "When a friend says, 'Oh, if I was in that situation, I would have punched him in the face,' it leaves me feeling like a failure. I didn't have the response that in my logical mind I would have wanted. This is probably something I'll have to forgive myself for somewhere down the line as I know logically, you never really know how you're going to respond until you're actually in that situation."
In her comments from the bench, Judge Cornish also addressed common rape myths and focused on the impact Homer's crimes have had on the three women in the many years they've waited for justice.
"Though as time goes on, I recognize that these victims may go days, weeks or even months without experiencing that cycle of trauma from this experience, there will be other times that it is as present and fresh as it was that day," said Cornish. "These are scars. They go deep. And they will carry these scars for the rest of their lives."
'It is being recognized by people who matter'
Baylie Steed is one of the victims whose delayed report in 2020 finally led to the charges against Homer in 2023.
"Those are the people that need to know the myths," Steed told the KSL Investigators in a video call after the sentencing. She felt encouraged to hear both the judge and prosecutor address common rape myths.
"It made me feel like they're definitely going to try to do better in the future. And that makes me really happy because nobody should have to go through something like this," she said.
Steed spent years in therapy before she felt ready to report what happened to police and then years waiting for something to come of that report.
"He is definitely a serial rapist, and he always has that title forever now," Steed said Monday. "I do feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders."
A delay in justice
In February 2023, a Failure to Protect report by the KSL Investigators detailed Steed's story. In June 2020, she reported a sexual assault at the hands of Homer to the Davis County Sheriff's Office. The incident had happened years prior, but Steed had only recently felt comfortable enough to come forward.
She met with a detective for a recorded interview.
"I never heard back," she said during an interview with the KSL Investigators in December 2022. "I thought I would hear back within a couple of months."
Steed wasn't the only woman who had made a report of rape against Homer with the Davis County Sheriff's Office. A second woman also sat down for a recorded interview with the agency in the summer of 2020, and she too was still waiting to hear from a detective when KSL Investigators spoke with her in 2022.
The KSL Investigators filed two public record requests with the Davis County Sheriff's Office that year, seeking any reports involving Homer. Both times, no records related to sexual assault were provided.
It wasn't until the KSL Investigators sent a third request in December 2022, after learning the names of both women, that the sheriff's office located their reports, which revealed why Steed and the other woman hadn't heard back.
In response to questions from the KSL investigators, the sheriff's office issued a statement in February 2023, saying in part: "The detective assigned to the case inaccurately believed that the charges for these two assaults would be handled by a different agency that had similar open cases on Mr. Homer. Recently, our office was made aware that internal protocols were not followed and subsequently, those cases were wrongfully closed. We recognize that our lapse in protocol resulted in a delay in justice for these two victims and we're sincerely sorry."
The sheriff's office reopened both investigations and said it has implemented additional protocols for case management, designed to prevent instances like this from happening in the future.
Following months of investigation and screening by the Davis County Attorney's Office, prosecutors filed the felony rape case against Homer in May 2023.
Failure to protect
In 2020, Utah women started sharing allegations of sexual assault against Homer under the hashtag: #UtahRapists. The movement caught the attention of investigators with Utah's State Bureau of Investigation, which confirmed it received more than 25 claims of sexual assault against Homer.
A KSL Investigation into Homer's criminal history found reports of sexual assault spanning a decade but no prison time. He was on probation for sex crimes he committed against a 16-year-old when the KSL Investigators first reported on the allegations against him in December 2022.
The next day, he was arrested for violating his probation terms and later ordered to serve a previously suspended prison sentence. He has been behind bars ever since.
In October 2023, Salt Lake County prosecutors filed felony rape and sodomy charges against Homer based on other assaults reported to have occurred in 2014. Homer has pleaded not guilty in that case, and his next hearing in Salt Lake County is scheduled for later this month.
Homer also faces new charges filed in August after he was found with a contraband cellphone in the Duchesne County Jail, a third-degree felony.
This report is part of a series examining how apparent gaps at every level of Utah's criminal justice system fail to protect Utahns.
Additional resources
If you have experienced sexual violence, you can access help and resources by calling Utah's 24-hour Sexual Violence Helpline at 1-888-421-1100. You can also call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 for free, confidential counseling.
