SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
The Salt Lake Tribune
October 1, 2018
By Connor Richards
Bízhínłth baá says she was repeatedly raped by her foster father in a small town in Utah’s Cache County.
Then 12 years old, the Navajo girl knew that what her foster father was doing to her “three or four times a week” wasn’t right, but when she reached out for help to a local leader of the women’s Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, baá says, she was met with disbelief. Worse, she was scolded and slapped.
“Do not tell anybody,” she recounts being warned. “And you think I had fear? Oh, I had fear. You can’t believe the fear I had.” And so the abuse continued throughout that school year, until the next May, she says, when she was returned home to the Navajo Nation.
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