A recent article in the excellent new site the Sisters Quorum talks about a situation in which a woman’s daughter, a victim of rape by fraud, is further traumatized in a series of interviews with her local leaders who are trying to gather additional information on the perpetrator and who don’t have much training or experience with the concept of rape by fraud.[1] It is a topic that isn’t well understood, and there are some reasons for that. The laws surrounding this crime differ by state, it overlaps with other sex crimes, and if defined too broadly, it can be difficult to prosecute. So let’s take a closer look.
First, what is rape by deception (aka rape by fraud)? Wikipedia says:
Rape by deception is a crime in which the perpetrator has the victim’s agreement and compliance, but gains it through deception or fraudulent statements or actions.
For Mormons, this is rendered more complex because while Rape by Fraud or Deception is a specific form of legal rape, it also may be a violation of the Law of Chastity (unlike other forms of rape). You didn’t consent to sex with the person you thought you did, but if you consented to extra- or pre-marital sex, even if your partner was deceptive, you may still have violated the Law of Chastity.
A Dialogue About Rape by Fraud
I had a discussion with a male friend about the concept of rape by fraud that will illustrate some of the difficulty in understanding the concept. I’ll call him David.
Then she discovered that he wasn’t a UVU student at all. He was a married guy with 3 kids living in Orem who trolled the campus looking for vulnerable female students to “date” and have sex with. She was devastated by his deception, and eventually dropped out of school and went back to her home country.
That’s rape by fraud. She would never have in a million years been in a “relationship” with him otherwise, and the only thing he wanted out of it was sex. She wasn’t sexually active and was planning to save herself for marriage. He used his lies to get her to comply, and he had done it with other girls before as she found out. Plus, the dude looked like that Nazi who gets his face melted off in the first Indiana Jones movie.
DAVID: I would call it fraud but not rape. I think taking violence out of the equation will actually cheapen what rape means and will make it so that victims of both rape and fraudulent seduction are less able to get redress. The behavior is, of course, worthy of condemnation, I would just prefer a different term to describe it. To me, rape is one of the most terrible things that happens in the world and it is a violent crime that isn’t really about sex as much as it is exercising violent power over another person.
I look at this from a legal perspective and see a problem with calling lying to get someone into bed, ‘rape’.
“If I had known he was half Mexican, I never would have had sex with him. He raped me.” And off he goes to prison for maybe his whole life is a concern for me. Rape should be a big deal and rape by frauds seems to me to make it less meaningful.
I agree that applying the term rape to a non-violent situation can seem problematic; however, date rape is often non-violent. If you have been roofied, you’re going to be passive in the encounter. Depending on the drugs given, you might even “participate” with diminished capacity to resist. Is that not rape? Even without drugs, emotional coercion and “not taking no” can be rape even if it’s not outwardly violent. There can be internal abrasion and no physical signs of violence. That’s still rape.
Not all rape is equally violent. Elizabeth Smart (after her initial abduction) was passive to avoid violence and to get it over with. I think your example is not on point. Not revealing your race is not deliberate fraud or deception. Also, rapists are not jailed for the rest of their life (usually 10-15 years max, often out in 5-7).
I was looking it up, and was somewhat surprised that there’s precedent for rape by fraud (aka rape by deception) as early as the 1860s. It’s not a carte blanche defense.
ME: Then you’re being arbitrary in what you are calling violence. Roofie=medication used to strip away a victim’s objection. Deception=lies used to strip away a victim’s objection.
DAVID: I think physically making a person unable to consent is different than tricking someone into consent. Consent regretted is still consent that was given, if that makes sense.
ME: What you are getting at, and where this gets tricky is that from the church’s perspective, the Law of Chastity is still violated because the consent was obtained in a situation where the church says it’s wrong (e.g. not already married). Is it legally “rape by fraud”? Yes. Is it also a violation of the law of chasity? Perhaps yes. But that’s not true in other rape cases (although plenty of bishops have misapplied consequences to rape victims, and BYU even now kicks out a woman impregnated by rape).
This is why the church struggles to deal with the concept of “consent.” For one thing, female consent has largely been off the radar for the church as a patriarchal institution. In a patriarchal institution, marriage = consent, but since marital rape also exists, that’s problematic. The assumption in most patriarchal organizations is that the man will have sex if the woman doesn’t prevent it, so if sex happens, the woman is to blame. But if rape happens, the man is to blame, and the woman was wronged. We don’t do very well in the gray areas where a woman ostensibly consents but there are extenuating circumstances or where genders are reversed.
DAVID: In my example, pretend the person actively misrepresents race. Rape is punishable in Utah by 5 years to life and the length of time incarcerated varies but is accompanied in any instance by lengthy parole and sex offender registration for 30 years to life. It’s significantly punished. If your roommate had been beaten and forcibly taken by the con-man I would view that as worse than what actually happened (which was still bad–let’s be clear that I’m merely talking about degrees of culpability)
- Woman A only wants to consent to sex with men. She is heterosexual. Woman B pretends to be a man, using prosthetic devices and other trickery to enter a sexual relationship with her. This case was judged to be Rape by Fraud.
- A man is sleeping in the basement at his brother’s house. His brother’s wife has sex with him in the dark in the middle of the night, claiming to be his girlfriend. He would never have consented to sex with his brother’s wife, and he did not know she wasn’t his girlfriend since they didn’t speak. That was Rape by Fraud.
- Likewise, I would consider my roommate’s situation to be Rape by Fraud (legally) but probably also a violation of the Law of Chastity, our rental agreement, and just basic good manners. [2] But she was certainly a victim and her circumstances merited more pastoral care than someone who just chooses to have sex.
- Your example of actively lying about race (kinda, depending on whether you consider being Arab vs Jewish to be a race or religion question) actually happened. It was deemed Rape by Fraud by an Israeli court: https://ylpr.yale.edu/solving-riddle-rape-deception
In the TV series, How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM to fans), the womanizing character Barney Stinson has a Playbook he uses full of elaborate deceptions to trick women into sleeping with him. Some of these are pretty far-fetched. For example, here are a few:- The SNASA: Barney goes up to a girl and claims he works for a secret government agency called “SNASA”, or “Secret NASA”, and claims to have been to the identically-named “SMoon”.
- The Cheap Trick: Barney claims that he is the bass player of a rock band with the ironic name of “Cheap Trick” (a real-life band).
- The He’s Not Coming: Barney goes to the observation deck of the Empire State Building (a rather romantic setting) and tells random women “He’s not coming” until one breaks down in his arms with the realization that their boyfriend isn’t coming for whatever reason.
- The Don’t Drink That: Barney stops a girl from drinking a drink, and then claims that Ted slipped something in there, resulting in Ted getting tackled by the bartender. Barney gets to play the sympathetic hero and get the girl.
This is an ongoing trope throughout the series, and while his friends chide him for his manipulations, they also feel that any woman who falls for his lies is getting what she deserves. [3] Is Barney a rapist? Are they facilitating rape by fraud?
There’s a reason these types of cases are so tricky. Generally, these conditions have to exist:
- The fraudulent information has to be material to the person’s willingness to consent. Demonstrating that the person would not normally consent without those conditions is important to proving it.
- The perpetrator has to be intentionally giving fraudulent information. This is important to distinguish between normal relationships in which both parties may have questionable levels of commitment at different times as they work out their feelings. It’s not Rape by Fraud if they’ve talked marriage, then had sex, and then later one of them gets cold feet on the marriage.
- Establishing a pattern of predatory behavior is helpful to determine if Rape by Fraud occurred. Multiple victims using the same deception would make a stronger case.
- Impersonating a person’s partner (whether married or not) in order to gain consent.
- Impersonating a doctor to trick someone into thinking sex is a medical procedure.
Some law makers would like to expand these laws to include many more forms of trickery. Even those who oppose rape by fraud may object to broadening legal protections, though, for a few reasons:
- It increases the power of the state (police and prosecutors) to regulate the private sex lives of citizens.
- It may result in stigmatization of vulnerable populations such as the transgender (5 convictions since 2012) or those with HIV (every state has prosecuted this specific type of case at least once), legally requiring disclosure to partners.
- In many situations it may be difficult to distinguish between intentional deception and things like self-deception or aggrandizement.
- Is it rape by fraud if a homosexual hides his sexual orientation because he hopes that heterosexual sex may be a “cure”?
- Is it rape by fraud if a person’s portrayal of her financial situation is optimistically exaggerated to snare a mercenary-motivated partner?
- Is it rape by fraud if a person remains in a sexual relationship while secretly cheating with another partner on the side?
- The concept of rape by fraud makes sexual access a commodity or good that can be taken fraudulently, similar to other things that can be stolen. I’d prefer the term consent based on deception (similar to uninformed consent in contracts), but nobody’s really going to ask me.
A few questions for discussion:
- Do you favor expanding the legal definition (and what is prosecuted) as rape by fraud or do you think the definition should be as narrow as possible? How do you think it should be defined for legal purposes?
- What recommendations would you have for an ecclesiastical leader encountering rape by fraud? Should discipline reflect the victim’s situation and err on the side of mercy and healing? Do you think the manipulations associated with rape by fraud can or should result in full exoneration for the victim (from a church standpoint)?
- Is it ever possible to get sexual ethics right since all human sexual relationships rely on mutual vulnerability?
Discuss, but gently as there are real victims of rape by fraud (whether by legal definition or colloquial) out there. It’s an important topic, but as with most issues surrounding human sexuality, it is a topic fraught with vulnerability.
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Wheat & Tares 
Legally, I think rape should be defined narrowly. A man’s misrepresentation of his race in an otherwise consensual sexual encounter should not become a rape after the fact, after she learns he is half-Mexican and is thereby offended.
A church member who purposefully keeps the law of chastity will avoid most of problems discussed in the original posting.
The legal definitions state by state are interesting. The result when the legal definition gets applied outside of the case law can be problematic, though they illustrate just where it can take you.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that all sorts of fraud used to procure sex or “unlawful conversation” ought not to be punishable. The more I’ve thought about it, why should something be wrong when selling a used car, but completely ok when used to obtain sex?
Was this already posted, or am I just halucinating?
I have no problem calling this rape. Whenever consent is tainted–whether through violence, coercion, threats, intoxication, or even false pretenses–it amounts to non-consent. Comfort and support the victim, and punish the perpetrator. In your BYU roommate example specifically, an emotionally vulnerable young woman was carefully groomed and manipulated by an experienced older man into doing something she probably would not have normally agreed to if, say, she was in a genuine romantic relationship with a man closer to her own age. In situations like that, I don’t think church discipline is warranted.
There is still a lot of gray area in some of these hypothetical situations. Nonetheless, cultural attitudes about consent/rape/harassment are changing (hopefully for the better).
Bro Jones: possibly both, but it was posted by me at BCC. Not everyone reads both sites, and it went up on a day when we had a bunch of posts all in one day, so it wasn’t played out.
The first two comments summarize the debate pretty well. As society becomes more concerned with female consent as the demarcation between rape and non-rape, we will continue to see these laws be reevaluated. Stephen’s observation about treating sexual consent more lightly than we do buying a car is a valuable comparison. In Mormon terms, we’re starting to come to grips with the idea that female consent matters and without consent, there’s no violation of the Law of Chastity. The question is whether consent must be informed consent, based on a reasonably accurate portrayal of facts, or if fooling someone through grooming, lies, or manipulations means they are not responsible. I suspect a higher percentage of women would see it as rape-equivalent than men would, and in Mormon policy, male interpretation is the one that counts.
We aren’t there yet, of course, but the Title IX scandal has definitely opened the dialogue to improve understanding. (Unfortunately, I believe it’s still BYU policy that if a woman is impregnated by rape she is expelled from BYU which is a complete travesty.)
As a general rule, I think if deception is involved in obtaining consent, then it’s a pretty strong case of rape by deception, from a legal perspective.
From a Law of Chastity perspective, if a man or woman is having sex to someone she is not married, that’s a violation. Now in the unusual case where a man or woman thinks he/she is having sex with a spouse, and because the lights are out, finds out it’s somebody else, well, that’s pretty weird situation, and I wouldn’t call that a chastity violation for the unknowing person, but the person who was deceiving should be held strictly accountable. They should be excommunicated for the deception. That’s not cool at all.
In the case of the UVU girl, she shouldn’t have had sex because she was single. The married man was trash and should be exed for both deception and sex outside of marriage, as well as go to prison for rape by deception. Legally the woman would be in the clear, but from a Law of Chastity perspective, if she willingly entered into a sexual relationship with someone she knew she wasn’t married to, well, that’s a problem in my book. I might be a little easier on the woman for the deception, but she shouldn’t have consented to sex even if the guy really was single. That’s still a problem in my book.
Yes, the legal framework for sexual assault raises a whole slew of problems for Mormon sexual ethics (as applied by bishops to members). First consider consent. Young women (or young men; the statues are gender neutral) under the age of 18 are not generally deemed to have the capacity to give consent. That’s why there are statutes to protect them (aka “statutory rape”). Even if they gave consent in fact, the perpetrator can still be prosecuted and the minor is seen as a victim by the system (judge, prosecutor, law enforcement). It is appalling that the criminal justice system, not generally noted for its concern or charity toward participants, views and treats a young victim as a victim but LDS bishops will often treat that victim as a sinner needing repentance and deserving of LDS punishment. This is simply shameful.
Then there is the problem that for a generation or two, local LDS leaders, acting on counsel from senior LDS leaders, encouraged gay men to get married to women as treatment or cure. It’s not clear how forthcoming they were to their marriage partners, but I’m sure in some cases they did not disclose (and may have been encouraged to not disclose) their sexual orientation. So this amounts to “marriage by fraud,” encouraged by the Church. The false view of LDS leaders that heterosexual sex would cure homosexual orientation, which they put into practice for many years but would now like to distance themselves from, makes it that much harder for them to recognize and criticize rape by fraud.
MH: “Legally the woman would be in the clear, but from a Law of Chastity perspective, if she willingly entered into a sexual relationship with someone she knew she wasn’t married to, well, that’s a problem in my book.”
I’m inclined to disagree. I don’t know the particulars of this situation, but I’m guessing this was an 18-year-old woman, first time living away from home, romantically/sexually inexperienced and very emotionally vulnerable. She was preyed upon by an experienced predator who knew exactly what to do and say to manipulate her into having sex against her better judgment. I don’t think she should be held accountable, as far as the LoC is concerned; its bad enough having to endure the shame of being deceived in this way. And in this case, it was enough to cause her to leave school and drastically alter the course of her life. I can’t see how church discipline for her would make this any better.
I’ve seen this pattern before in the lives of 3 different women I know: female LDS college freshmen who “fell in love” with much older (mid-30s), supposedly righteous LDS men who turned out to be predators. In one case, the woman got pregnant, and the man further coerced her into getting an abortion, then abandoned her shortly afterward. In another, the woman got pregnant, kept the baby, and had to give up her athletic scholarship and subsequently dropped out of school, never to return. In all cases, the spiritual and temporal consequences for the women were devastating, while the men got off pretty light.
Dave B: excellent point about gay men marrying straight women as a cure (and this advice being given by bishops with a knowing wink “once you have sex with a woman, you’ll never go back). This is another reason that the Policy of Exclusion was so hurtful. Many of the LDS children of gay parents are from divorced couples in joint custody situations where the gay spouse was foolishly encouraged into an unwanted heterosexual marriage as a cure, and when that didn’t work out, both ex-spouses had to come up with the best solution for their joint offspring that they could. Then the church added to that tension by barring their children from baptism unless they are in the primary custody of the heterosexual spouse!
But to your point about a gay person marrying a straight one, that also cuts to to quick. How much of deception in human relationships is deliberately manipulating the other person vs. self-deception or aggrandizement or hopes? Is it deception for a commitment-phobe to imply he or she wants a long-term commitment or that marriage is on the table, when it really isn’t? The standard is difficult to define unless someone can demonstrate that their partner acted in deliberate bad faith.
What’s interesting, too, is that “seduction” often historically entailed acting in deliberate bad faith, saying whatever was necessary to achieve one’s aim: carnal knowledge without any enforceable commitment.
Jack Hughes & others: I don’t remember what the actual disciplinary outcome was for my roommate, but I suspect she was comforted and told to “sin no more,” but as I said, she left the country and dropped out of her program. The man had no consequences I know of as he wasn’t in a student ward. The incident definitely altered her life plans. She was older, though, maybe 25, and he was in his late 20s or early 30s, so the age difference wasn’t as big a factor. The real issue I suspect is that she was vulnerable as a foreigner, one who really wanted to date and marry a Mormon, and being in Utah was one of her only chances to meet eligible Mormon men as there weren’t many in her country of origin. She was a very pretty girl, and we all felt that she was way out of his league, but that’s how it goes sometimes when you have a short window and are looking to get married.
Ohhh…I remember him. Perfect description of him, btw. I also remember trying to convince her that something was amiss, even the day he left his wallet and it had a dif name. What a scum.
Not sure what the answer is, but given the aftermath, I would say it was at least as traumatic for her as any rape would be. It may be a case by case thing…no clear cut answer.
(In our kitchen????ew)
Jack, let’s assume there was no deception. What responsibility does a woman have in premarital sex? I don’t think premarital sex is ever ok, and neither does the church. Are you saying premarital is ok and is not a chastity violation? If so, I think you and the church are going to have irreconcilable differences.
Mormon Heretic: I think Jack’s POV is that being groomed and manipulated reduce one’s ability to be held accountable for sin. That’s something I think it’s hard to make a blanket rule for or to judge when it has occurred, but it may be a valid point in some cases. For example, he assumed she was much younger (not the case, but why not as a hypothetical), also someone who was a foreigner, also someone who wanted marriage to a Mormon man. She had way more to lose in this situation, so by pretending to be equally vulnerable, he was able to make her more docile and incapable of thwarting his advances.
Elizabeth Smart was 14, well under the age of consent, so it would been rape even if she was willing. What were her options, actively resist and get beat up and still get raped, or just let him rape her. Poor example. While I see a need for civil law against rape by fraud , God’s law is a higher standard, no pre martial sex.. There is little to no excuse for ” I only did it because he lied to me.”
I am confused by the comment that “BYU even now kicks out a woman impregnated by rape” linking to a 2016 article that says, “The school said it would never expel a student for getting pregnant from a rape.” It was one bishop, not a school rep, who told a woman she would be expelled if she got pregnant from a situation he was too dense to recognize as rape. As far as I know, this was not BYU policy then or now.
Kinda random, but this reminds me of the Mormon movie version of Pride and Prejudice, where the Wickham character takes the Miss Darcy character to Vegas and marries her, presumably consummates the marriage, then runs up her credit cards gambling and drinking — which turns out to be his MO with naive Mormon girls. That strikes me as rape by fraud, and if that is then your roommate’s situation is. As far as the LoC, sure, it was a violation on her part, but I agree that discipline would be cruel, as the situation itself was already too harsh a punishment. I suppose it’s like the difference between Eve defiantly deciding to eat the fruit one day while flipping off God vs. Eve being beguiled by the serpent into breaking her diet.
Ever since reading this post at BCC I have noticed how prevalent it is in movies and television for a man to try and trick a woman into having sex with him (and while the reverse also happens in movies and television it isn’t considered as socially acceptable). It’s a funny joke in almost every sitcom at some point. I think we need to eradicate this from our culture. It’s not funny to lie to someone to obtain sex. I would say that while most of the cases of this happening on television aren’t illegal (and possibly shouldn’t be illegal), they are definitely unethical and immoral. Even if we can’t make them illegal, can we please change our culture to make them socially unacceptable? I would imagine there is a large number of men out there (probably not as many Mormon men) who have committed rape by fraud (or whatever you want to call it) and still consider themselves good moral men who are champions of women. They may not even realize that what they’ve done is bad because it is so socially acceptable. Gross.
As far as a law of chastity violation goes, I would agree with MH that it is technically a violation of the law of chastity. However, hopefully bishops can ask the right questions and be able to discern when someone needs to be called to repentance and when they just need to be given love and pastoral care and reassured that they are not damaged goods. Of course, it would help if bishops had some serious pastoral training, but that’s a whole different issue.
Until I saw this post on BCC, I don’t think I had heard of rape by deception. Most, if not all, will agree that people fundamentally have a right to choose whom they have sex with. Using deception to gain sexual access to a person would seem to deprive them of that right, so I think the term rape fits logically, although emotionally it seems different.
In the discussion in the OP, Dave seems to be concerned that gray-area cases (or perhaps off-white cases) could result in unjust consequences for the (alleged) perpetrator. This comes up as a common point of discussion when discussing rape and consent. What about false accusations? What if both people are too intoxicated to consent?
It’s true that there is a gray area, some set of circumstances where it may be difficult to determine whether somebody with holding information is just “putting their best foot forward” or is it rape by deception. Ultimately, for a legal definition the judicial system decides where that line is. But I think that we will all agree that anyone that is in the legal gray area is morally in the wrong.
On a side note, I find sitcoms that portray this as funny to be disturbing. I don’t like them.
On a second side note, it occured to me that it may be possible to rape by deception within a marriage… Perhaps if one spouse decides not to take birth control and lies about it in order to get pregnant, would that count? (Or the male alternative, intentionally altering or damaging the birth control rendering it ineffective, which seems much worse to me because the male is not the one who will carry the child).
The more I think about it, the more this seems like a go-to plot for every other rom-com out there. The Truth About Cats and Dogs, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch….
My take on what went on with the UVU woman and the married scumbag who deceived her (and others) to get sex is different from most. Calling this case “rape” by deception is a misuse of the word. If this is truly a case of “rape” or fraud, then a whole lot of human sexual behavior is rape and/or fraud. Are we ready for that?
Nearly all men and women use deception to gain sex and commitment. But I think we tend to only notice male deception. Men (like the Barney Stinson character) will inflate their status as providers, their accomplishments, their height or income in online profiles. They’ll engage in all sorts of misrepresentation to signal their availability and ability to be good mating partners. They’ll enhance their perceived value by using other women as props, signaling their success or likely future success (marrying a man accepted into med school is nearly as good as marrying one already out, yes?), and by telling interesting or even exaggerated stories about themselves. It’s the stuff of sitcoms and romcoms. But let’s be aware that women do the exact same thing! They just do it in a complimentary manner and we don’t notice it as much. Women wear make-up to falsify their facial symmetry (a signal to men of their genetic health). Women get boob jobs or wear clothing that exaggerates steatopgia–think bustle dresses of the 1800’s or the butt selfies of today–a sign of one’s likely success at child-bearing. These deceptive behaviors and more are all attempts to signal sexual fitness (or hide the lack thereof), one’s ability to be a good mate, in order to gain a man’s attention and resources. It’s really hard to label this dirtbag a rapist but then ignore the same sort of deception all around us. His deceptive behavior was simply more elaborate and affected more people.
Did the man in the OP’s story commit “rape” when he deceived her about his single status and ability to be a fit mate in order to get sex with the UVU woman? If you think so, get ready to also call it rape when a man wakes up next to woman only to discover that the make-up she was wearing the previous 3 weeks deceived him into thinking she was a fitter mate than she actually is. Get ready to prosecute a great many women for “rape by deception” if they’ve misrepresented their previous sexual experience to their fiances before marriage. Get ready to call a women out for fraud when she wears a push-up bra or Spanx. Or what about the person who uses Photoshop to hide 40 pounds from his or her Tinder photo before showing up for a date? Is that criminal too? Maybe theft (for the price of the dinner tab)?
I suspect it’s just plain old sexism that makes so many of us not notice deceptive behavior in BOTH sexes. It’s patriarchal (a belief that women need men’s protection and can’t make their own sexual choices) if we think it’s worse when the one deceived is a woman as in the OP’s story.
It’s hard for us to see because the OP has already adopted the story trope of female-as-victim, but is the UVU woman more disappointed to learn that she had sex with a married man or that she’s simply been outsmarted? After all, given that the man is legally married, it’s now absolutely impossible for her to use the sex as manipulation into marriage and a green card. Again, sexual deceit runs rampantly in both directions, folks. It’s often our sexist beliefs that prevent us from seeing it.
Yes, the guy in this story is a scumbag. But I don’t care how the Wikipedia article tries to define it. The word “rape” and “fraud” (of the criminal kind) are reserved for entirely different things. It cheapens the word “rape” to invoke it in this context.
No one’s going to answer Pagan? Fine, I will. It is a fair point that there’s a gradient of culpability and criminality involved. I guess I’m stuck on your comparison that the predatory, deceptive behavior of a person tricking someone into bed (or countertop) is the equivalent of wearing makeup. Do people not know that girls wear makeup? Can they really not tell? And if that’s a dealbreaker, couldn’t a guy forbear sleeping with a girl until he’s seen her without it? One assumes you can tell if a woman is wearing Spanx, a push-up bra, or a bustle before the “crucial moment,” or if your Tinder date is materially different than his picture before you pay for dinner.
Also, the OP was clear the roommate came to Utah for a Mormon husband, which isn’t too hard to believe given the church’s emphasis on temple marriage, so why insinuate green-card motivations? Not everyone’s as desperate to be American as Americans like to think.