‘I survived’: Utah woman speaks out after man charged with abusing her as a child dies before trial

Collin Leonard, KSL.com

ROY, Utah (KSL.com) — Emma Hyer never got to read the victim impact statement she wrote to the man charged with sexually abusing her as a child.

Benjamin Henry Rasmussen was 80 years old, frail, with declining health when he was arrested in February 2024 and charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony.

But months of brief scheduling conferences, continuances and competency discussions ultimately ended without closure. Rasmussen died in January and the case was dismissed.

While KSL.com does not usually name victims of sexual abuse, Hyer felt it was important to tell her story.

“The only thing I wanted was for him just to admit what he had done,” Hyer, now 23, told KSL.com. “I don’t want to say I’ll ever forgive him for what he did, but I feel like I would be on a way better path to forgiveness and to closure had I gotten that.”

A friend’s grandfather

Rasmussen was Hyer’s friend’s grandfather. Hyer said the abuse started when she was 8 years old, when she started going over to her friend’s house to play.

The man began having her sit on his lap, touching her inappropriately, before things escalated, she said. She was abused “anywhere from once to twice a week, every week” until she was around 12 years old.

An arrest report alleges specific incidents of sexual abuse, like Rasmussen going into the shared camping trailer Hyer was sleeping in on a trip, or in the back of a grocery store parking lot.

“I remember a lot of the times, one of the places it was happening is in one of the bedrooms in the basement,” Hyer said. “I just remember looking at the blinds and just counting all the blinds. And that was the only thing I can focus on to make it go by faster.”

An undated photo of Emma Hyer, a survivor of repeated sexual abuse as a child. | Courtesy Emma Hyer

Rasmussen would take Hyer and her friend to Classic Fun Center every Wednesday, buying her rollerblades. They had pizza for dinner every Friday, and he would take the girls to Lagoon Amusement Park or other trips.

He got Hyer a phone and would message her through Facebook Messenger, evidence detectives were able to find through subpoenas, she said.

But the abuse continued, she said, and as a kid, she didn’t understand what was happening to her. “I cared for him in a weird, twisted, sick way. You’re a very impressionable little kid, and you trust people you know.”

Residual trauma

After Hyer and her friend went to separate middle schools, she no longer saw Rasmussen. But she felt like she should have been able to have stopped it, that she was “dirty and disgusting” and if she told anyone she would not be believed or loved.

“Had there been someone that I had known, or someone from my town, or someone that was my age talking about it, I would have had the courage to talk about it sooner,” Hyer believes. “Had I done that sooner, then we could have started this process a lot sooner.”

For years, Hyer experienced depression, isolation, fear, anxiety and bullying, leading to multiple suicide attempts, all while living in the same town as Rasmussen, keeping what she experienced a tightly held secret.

In 2020, Hyer was living in Salt Lake City and participating in an intensive, 12-week trauma therapy program. She had a “pretty good breakthrough with my therapist,” she said, where she was encouraged to talk to her parents. “I wrote a note and I gave it to them, and I had to leave the room,” Hyer recalled. “That was probably the scariest thing I’d ever done.”

Seeking justice

“It’s not unusual that she didn’t report for all those years,” Rod Layton, longtime director of the Weber-Morgan Children’s Justice Center, told KSL.com. In fact, it’s “very, very common” — something “90% of the population doesn’t know,” he said. “It’s just the way the trauma brain works.”

Hyer reported the abuse to Layton, who happened to be a family friend, before spending over two and a half hours with Roy police detectives who were “absolutely incredible,” she said.

“They had me draw the layout of the house, the layout of the trailer, everything in the backyard, as much details of the rooms that I can. Remember every single detail about any instance of abuse that I can remember,” Hyer said.

Emma Hyer poses for a portrait at home in West Haven on Feb. 13. Hyer is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, whose alleged abuser died before his conviction. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

“She was talking about dates and times and things that were said and things that were done. And so there was no question at all that everything she said was credible and true,” Layton said. “You don’t often get victims like that where they can be so detailed, but Emma was. She was very, very sharp.”

Rasmussen was arrested Feb. 29, 2024, and was in jail until posting $50,000 bail on March 11.

The first time Hyer saw Rasmussen in court, she said, “It felt like a gut punch, like I couldn’t breathe.”

“I was expecting to see him how I saw him then,” she said. Instead, he was “this frail old man.”

“You’ve got a guy that comes into the courtroom, he’s got oxygen tanks all over him, he’s got all this stuff hooked up to him, which was probably part of the show,” Layton said. The two sat through a long series of court hearings, mostly procedural, and Hyer’s frustration grew while Rasmussen’s health waned.

Hyer got a call earlier this month: Rasmussen was dead.

“My initial thoughts are like, ‘He got away with it,’ … and just thinking of like how small I felt, thinking, ‘Was it worth going through the pain?'”

According to Layton, “The bottom line with this case is … he left this world knowing that she had reported it. He left this world knowing that she was a strong girl, and she stood there in that courtroom, and she stood right there at the door so that when he was wheeled in, he saw her.”

Hyer was not able to read her impact statement in court or to Rasmussen, but she still wants it to be known: “I am a survivor. I survived the horrific doings of this man. He tried to take everything from me — my innocence, my safety, my sense of self — but he did not take my strength.

“Despite everything, I am still here. I am standing before you today, speaking these words, because I survived. Because I am reclaiming my life.”