Sexual assault survivors testify to Senate committee on bill to close loophole

Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault. Please return to the homepage if you are not comfortable with the topic. If you are in distress and need to speak with someone, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A Texas House bill to close a loophole in the state’s sexual assault laws got a hearing in the Senate Criminal Justice committee on Thursday after its supporters made a push Tuesday for its consideration.

House Bill 3073, named the “Summer Willis Act,” passed in the House on May 1 with only four representatives voting against it, according to legislative records.

Senator Angela Paxton, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, laid out the bill before the committee and noted that it would define consent in Texas law.

“Under current law, those who are intoxicated of their own volition are not protected by this language. And additionally, current law does not protect a victim who is drugged by one person but raped by another,” Paxton said. “This provision simply addresses if the perpetrator knows that the other person cannot consent because of intoxication or impairment by any substance.”

She noted that the bill has the support of the Governor’s Sexual Assault Survivors Task Force.

The bill’s namesake was a University of Texas at Austin student whose sexual assault was not investigated or prosecuted due to a gap in Texas’ criminal code. Willis, now an advocate for survivors, is fighting to close the loophole that she said kept her from getting justice.

Willis testified to the committee about her experience, but first, she thanked them for passing a resolution Tuesday that recognized her for her advocacy work.

“The first time this bill passed the House of Representatives was just months after I was raped 10 years ago, and for 10 years, it has been passed over as if stories like mine and others didn’t matter,” she said during the hearing. “For years, I buried this trauma. But trauma is not so easily buried, it becomes a shadow that follows you.”

It was the birth of her sons in 2024 that motivated her to push harder for change, Willis said. In February, Willis crawled a half marathon in Austin to raise awareness around sexual assault policy reform in her “The Last Time We Crawl” campaign.

“The most devastating part, the rape that altered my life forever, the one that unraveled my sense of safety and trust and self esteem isn’t even legally considered rape in Texas because the person who handed me the drink wasn’t the person who raped me,” she said. “In Texas, if we don’t scream, if we don’t fight, if we have been drugged and made too incapacitated to say no, it doesn’t count.”

She said that her advocacy work led her into community with other survivors, which she estimated to be around 8.5 million Texans. She came to the hearing with those conversations clearly driving her mission to help others get justice.

“No matter what happens with this bill, I will never benefit from its justice. But that’s okay, because this bill isn’t for me, it is for every Texan who deserves to be protected from the horror that I endured,” Willis said. “I’ve asked myself a question that no Texan should have to ask: Would it have been better if I was raped in a different state, like Oklahoma or Florida, because at least they would acknowledge what happened to me was real, that it mattered, that I mattered?”

Willis concluded her remarks by asking the committee: “Will Texas be the state that leaves survivors crawling, or will you stand with us?”

Other survivors, including Dr. Lavinia Masters, also spoke at the hearing. In 2019, a bill named after Masters led to changes in processing DNA testing kits.

The committee left HB 3073 as pending after it received the testimony. The Senate has until May 28 to consider the bill.