When the Itasca County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Randall Lee Vannet of Grand Rapids for allegedly raping his girlfriend, Renee Dianne “Rae” Florek, she didn’t give up.

Florek had dated Vannet for more than four years. On the evening of Jan. 18, 2013, she and Vannet had had consensual sex in her Taconite home. Before going to bed, Florek took her regular pain medication to dull residual nerve pain from throat cancer treatment. After she fell asleep, Vannet allegedly had sex with her twice more while she was unable to awaken or consent. Three days later, he told her what he had done.

“He told on himself. He said ‘that’s OK, babe, because last time I was here I took you two more times,’’’ Florek said in an interview. “My mind raced, ‘What did he just say to me?’ I turned around and said to him, ‘You can’t do that. That’s date rape.’”

Florek called police. The Itasca County sheriff’s officer who responded raised her suspicions when he referred to Vannet as “Randy” and told her that videotaping Vannet discussing the incidents would constitute entrapment.

Florek bought a GoPro camera, hid it inside a teddy bear and recorded Vannet on two separate occasions admitting to the behavior. She turned to Advocates for Family Peace, a Grand Rapids anti-domestic violence organization, and to Gender Justice, a St. Paul nonprofit legal organization. Together they met with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to ask if another body would prosecute Vannet. There was none.

In September 2015, Gender Justice filed a civil suit in Itasca County District Court, accusing Vannet of battery and negligence per se and seeking monetary damages. On Dec. 13, 2017, an Itasca County jury rejected the battery claim but awarded Florek $5,000 for the negligence claim.

The award won’t even cover half of the cost of representation, but the suit wasn’t about the money, according to Lisa Stratton, Gender Justice co-founder and senior counsel. The organization has been working for years to change the public perception that most sexual assaults are perpetrated by strangers. In fact, most rapists are acquaintances or family members of those whom they assault, Stratton said.

Prosecuting sexual assault when the alleged victim is incapacitated is even less likely, because the victim cannot remember what happened, she added.

“It was very important to Rae that she get some form of justice,” said Christy Hall, the Gender Justice staff attorney who represented Florek. “She was extremely disappointed when she found out that the Itasca County attorney was not going to prosecute the case. Nothing was going to change that outcome. That’s why it was so important to bring this as a civil sexual assault case. What she really wanted was for a jury to say, ‘Yes, this happened.’”

Civil suits over claims of sexual assault have become more common in recent years. Witness the suits against several Catholic archdioceses and against comedian Bill Cosby, not to mention those prompted by the #MeToo movement. Most of those were filed against people or organizations more likely than the average person to have the means to pay a significant judgment and fully compensate the attorney(s) for their work, Stratton said.

Gender Justice chose to represent Florek as a test case. Florek learned that Vannet was under criminal investigation for alleged sexual assault of another incapacitated woman in St. Paul in 2015. Hall subpoenaed the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office for the records in that case. Judge Lois Lang denied Vannet’s motion to quash the subpoena and allowed the alleged victim in that case to testify for the plaintiff. Vannet was not charged in the 2015 incident.

Florek claimed negligence on Vannet’s part in order to introduce criminal sexual conduct law into the civil case, according to Hall.

“I’m saying that by assaulting her either time, he violated the criminal sexual conduct law by definition and was negligent,” Hall explained. “The point is not the negligence.”

Defense attorney Alan Fish of Roseau said he has filed a motion challenging Lang’s decision to allow a claim of negligence per se. The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that there is no separate cause of action or negligence per se claim under sexual abuse statutes, Fish said.

“We’re saying there is no right to put a negligence per se question to a jury,” he added. “There is no law that enables it to happen. Negligence per se is a civil concept.”

Fish said he advised Vannet against speaking with a reporter. The attorney also said he considers Florek’s case “marginal,” and one that only a nonprofit organization would pursue.

“I do plaintiffs’ work and I wouldn’t have touched this case with a 10-foot pole,” Fish said. “The costs to bring a civil case to trial are substantial relative to the potential damages.”

That’s one point on which both sides agree.

“Financially, for a private attorney, it’s difficult to know whether you could even collect a judgment,” Hall said.

Even though the trial was difficult and she’s been shunned by friends, Florek is glad she didn’t give up. She has renewed her efforts to bring criminal charges against Vannet, and wants to change societal attitudes about date rape.

“It’s not only how we’re raising our daughters,” Florek said. “It’s a gender thing on both sides.”

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