Woman uses law to convene grand jury in attack

A woman took matters into her own hands after a Kansas prosecutor declined to file sex crime charges against a man she says turned consensual sex into a terrifying assault. She's used an 1887 state law allowing citizens to convene grand juries. (May 25)

Video Transcript

MADISON SMITH: The county attorney did tell me that it was likely just going to be probation and nothing else, which was-- I was mad about, because the one thing that I needed was to have the perpetrator be a registered sex offender, because he is a sex offender. And the county attorney just didn't see it that way.

The only reason we get to do this is because we live in Kansas that has the grand jury statute, and if it wasn't for that, we would have been one and done a long time ago.

Not necessarily that I wanted my name to be out there. It's that I wanted my story to be out there, because this happens nationwide, worldwide, that victims and survivors are minimized by the prosecutors who don't believe them. And that's not OK because rape culture is so prevalent, and we need to get rid of it. And one of the ways to do that is to get our stories out there and be heard.

And that's the hard part, but when you know you're fighting the good fight and you're getting the word out there and you're going to make a change, it makes it a little bit easier. But it's still pretty difficult to tell it over and over again. But you just got to keep that big picture in mind.

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