The family of a severely disabled woman who was raped by her stepfather want to change the law so that perpetrators will be charged less leniently in similar cases.
Brian Kenneth Urban pled guilty to raping Ashley Vigil, who suffered from a rare disorder known as Rett syndrome. The 33-year-old woman was unable to walk or talk or fight back because of her condition, according to her mother.
Urban was arrested in Oct. 2022 after Vigil’s family found horrific video of his abuse at their home in Price, Utah. The family wanted to document their daughter’s worsening seizures, so they followed through on installing video cameras in her room on the advice of her doctor.
“Instead of catching the seizures, I caught him,” said Paula Vigil, Ashley’s mother.
“In her condition, she can’t move. He had to completely undress her, move her to the couch, and take her diaper off, to do what he did. Then he had to dress her and put her back in her bed, so I wouldn’t know,” she explained.
“Her body was seizing, and she was crying for help in the only way she could,” she added. “If not for those cameras, I would have never known, and I would have never had proof.”
Ashley Vigil died on March 16 after continuing to suffer from seizures and losing weight. She weighed only 48 pounds when she died.
Urban was convicted of five felonies, including rape and forcible sexual abuse. He will be sentenced in April.
The victim’s family believes that Urban might be leniently sentenced because, according to the law, the victim was considered an adult and her severe disability was not being taken under consideration. They want to change the law in order for severely disabled people to be given special consideration when they are victimized.
Some lawmakers have expressed interest in passing “Ashley’s Law” in order to implement mandatory sentences in similar cases.
“He did this to someone who could not fight back. He should be getting a mandatory prison sentence, and there’s just this hole in the system,” said Ashley’s mother.
“She spent her life trapped in her little, tiny body, where she could be safe in her home,” she added. “Then he took even that, and eventually he took her life.”
Here’s more about the case:
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