Four Men Are Accused of Raping 9 Year Old

Four men accused of a vicious rape. A victim who is just 9 years old. And a mother who had left her alone so she could smoke methamphetamine nearby.

According to the Uintah County Sheriff’s Department, the girl had fallen asleep on a couch at the house of her mother’s friend on March 27 in Vernal, a city of about 9,000 people about 170 miles from Salt Lake City. As the girl’s mother was in the garage smoking drugs, four men at the house took the girl into another room and raped her, the authorities said.

In the days that followed, Larson RonDeau, 36; Josiah RonDeau, 20; Jerry Flatlip, 29; and Randall Flatlip, 26, were arrested one by one and locked up in the county jail.

The men made their first appearance in district court on Tuesday on charges of felony rape and sodomy of a child, G. Mark Thomas, the county attorney, said in an emailed statement. They did not enter a plea, but each has maintained his innocence in statements to investigators.

Local news reports about the case generated a furious outcry, leading the sheriff’s department to take the unusual step of appealing for calm as some people on social media suggested ways for the men to be killed.

“The interest and concern over the case of victimization of a nine-year-old girl in our county has been overwhelming and unprecedented,” the department said in a statement on its Facebook page. “Occasionally there are incidents that we face that are shocking to the conscience, and this case has certainly been one of those for us all.”

As the police described the case of a rape at a northeastern Utah home, its horrifying details have shaken the small city where the attack unfolded and have reverberated far beyond, with some even calling for vigilante justice.