Texas lawmakers update sexual assault laws, allowing more survivors to pursue justice

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At 4 a.m. on the Saturday before this year’s Austin marathon, Summer Willis began crawling.

For the next 22 hours, she stayed on her hands and knees until she reached the halfway point of a race that hadn’t technically begun. As a sexual assault survivor and advocate, Willis was trying to raise awareness about a bill that bears her name, aimed at fixing what she and many others saw as a flaw in Texas’ sexual assault laws.

“It felt like a crawl to be able to share my story for the first time, to be able to date my husband, to acknowledge what happened to me,” Willis said. “Every step of it felt like an excruciating crawl, and that felt like the ultimate metaphor.”

The morning of the marathon, Willis — who ran the marathon the day after her 13-mile crawl — found herself right across the street from where she was assaulted over 10 years ago. As she crossed the finish line, several Texas lawmakers joined her, including Reps. Julie Johnson and Donna Howard and Congressman Lloyd Doggett.

House Bill 3073, also known as the Summer Willis Act, amends what advocates called a sexual assault loophole in Texas laws and clarifies the definition of consent. Previously, state laws had what experts called a “laundry list” of what does not constitute as consent, but not all sexual assault cases fit neatly in this list, making already difficult to prosecute cases even harder for prosecutors to pursue.

HB 3073 amended a provision of the law that stated if someone was assaulted while they were too inebriated to consent, it was only considered assault if the perpetrator purposely drugged the victim.

That meant that it wasn’t considered a sexual assault if the alleged victim had themselves gotten too intoxicated to consent. Or, as was the case with Willis’s experience, if one person drugs the victim but a different person assaults them, that was also not legally recognized as sexual assault.

An earlier version of HB 3073 included language that would have made it a crime to continue the sexual act after someone had withdrawn their consent, but that provision was removed from the bill. Several other states recognize the ability to withdraw consent in their sexual assault laws, including Oklahoma, Vermont, and Utah.

It took several more months, a lot of campaigning, and the work of many other advocates to give it momentum in the Legislature. The bill passed the House before stalling at the Senate, which is where the bill had died in the past two legislative sessions.

This time, the bill passed in the last 30 minutes on the last day of the legislative session, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it on June 20.

“The passage of the Summer Willis Act is a clear statement that Texas will not tolerate sexual violence — and that we will no longer allow confusion about consent to be a shield for predators,” said Sen. Angela Paxton, who sponsored this bill, in a statement to The Texas Tribune.

After her assault, Willis runs marathons to raise awareness

Willis was a sophomore at University of Texas Austin when she attended a fraternity party and was handed a drink. After that, the rest of the night became blurry, she said, and although she doesn’t remember the assault, she remembers her assaulter telling her about it the next morning.

For years, she didn’t tell anyone about what happened. She moved out of Austin, studied abroad, worked for Teach for America, met her husband, and became a mom. Three months before she turned 29, Willis learned about a woman named Julie Weiss who ran 52 marathons in 52 weeks to raise money for pancreatic cancer, which had claimed her father’s life.

Inspired by Weiss, Willis decided to run 29 marathons in a year to raise awareness for sexual assault survivors. She was four months postpartum, still breastfeeding, and not a runner. Her first marathon was in Lake Tahoe, and she had arrived but her luggage did not.

“The airline had lost my breast pump, and my boobs metastasized, and I literally couldn’t even lift my arms up while I was running the first day,” Willis said.

She completed that marathon with her arms down, and then completed 28 more in the next year. Along the way, Willis met survivor after survivor who shared stories similar to her own. Willis wanted to do more to help, so she connected with the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA).

“That’s when they told me even if you tried to press charges, your rape doesn't count in Texas because one person handed you a drink and another person raped you,” Willis said. They told her about their work on HB 3073, and that’s when Willis started brainstorming ways to raise awareness, such as crawling the Austin marathon.

Bill failed twice before this year

In 2021, during the 87th Texas Legislature, TAASA first began trying to pass a version of the bill, which passed in the House but was not given a hearing in the Senate and died there. The next session, the same thing happened even though the Governor’s Sexual Assault Survivors’ Task Force had the bill as one of its legislative recommendations.

Lavinia Masters, who has been a member of the task force since 2019, said one of the challenges they encountered was lawmakers being unable to agree on a definition of consent.

She was thrilled when Willis began helping bring public attention to the bill this year. But the bill once again began to stall in the Senate. Katiana Soenen, a sexual assault survivor and advocate, and her mom Paulina Pizarro, said that as the legislative session neared its end, they were getting word that there wasn’t much hope left for the bill. Still, she was determined to keep fighting.

“You need this bill. It’s safety. It’s common sense,” said Soenen, who was born and raised in Texas but now lives in Washington D.C.. “People want Texas to be a safe state.”

Pizarro, Soenen’s mom, rallied a group of 18 mothers who knew Soenen as a child and asked them to call senators every day about the bill.

“Some of these moms I haven’t talked to since [Soenen] was in middle school,” Pizarro said. “It was so uplifting to know that these women still cared, regardless of how our girls had gone on different paths and we’ve gone on different paths.”

A vote with minutes to spare

Meanwhile, Willis held a press conference and took to social media. Celebrities like Monica Lewinsky and Christy Turlington mentioned the bill on their platforms. For Willis, it was important to get as much attention about this bill as possible, especially when most people weren’t aware of the weaknesses in Texas law that it sought to address.

On the last day of the session, Willis sat with a group of advocates waiting for their bill to be called.

“I think it was 9:30 p.m., we thought they were going to be going ‘til midnight, 1 a.m. like they usually do, but they [said] they’re closing for construction in 30 minutes,” Willis said. “We all started crying.”

But then, HB 3073 was called and within minutes, the bill passed.

“And then we were all crying because we were so overjoyed. Everyone put their heart and soul into getting that bill passed,” Willis said. “It may be named after me, but it was so many people doing such hard work.”

The law will go into effect Sept. 1.

“The criminal justice system now has the appropriate tool in this bill to be able to obtain more prosecutions of people who are willing to sexually assault somebody who cannot give consent, and therefore, the rest of the population will have greater safeties,” said Heather Bellino, the chief executive officer at Texas Advocacy Project, an organization that provides free legal services to survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking.

HB 3073 will put the Texas Penal Code’s definition of consent into Texas sexual assault laws, which Janna Oswald, an assistant district attorney in Harris County and division chief of the Adult Sex Crimes Division, called a key change.

Previously, the definition of consent was applied to other crimes such as theft or assault but not sexual assault. Oswald recounted a case where two coworkers were sharing a hotel room and the woman woke up to a man assaulting her.

The woman froze. Previously, Texas laws did not consider this a crime since consent was not explicitly denied, but now that consent has been defined, a case like this can be prosecuted due to the fact that consent was not clearly given.

Oswald said that while she has more tools to prosecute more types of sexual assault cases, she understands the concerns about overprosecution and said that HB 3073 won’t necessarily make prosecuting sexual assault cases easier.

“It doesn't make the cases more of a slam dunk to a guilty on these cases,” Oswald said. “But it allows us to hold accountable people that we do know are predatory a little bit easier.”

“It’s just a step”

Soenen said this bill signifies to survivors like herself that they are not silenced and they are not powerless. Working on this bill reaffirmed to her that people do care, and when you speak about your experiences, change is possible.

“It's just a step, and so much more progress that needs to happen in Texas,” Soenen said. “I think seeing that change was possible meant so survivor.”

Willis is proud to have helped get her namesake bill passed, but she won’t be able to get justice for her own case. By the time she had processed her assault enough to want to pursue legal action, the 10-year criminal statute of limitations had passed.

Willis said she already plans on working to expand the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases during the next Texas Legislature. Such a change likely wouldn’t apply to her case because new criminal laws are rarely applied retroactively.

“I don't believe justice has a time limit,” Willis said.

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