Veterans affairs criminal investigator charged with sexually assaulting woman

WHITE CITY — An investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman he met on a dating app.

Steven Michael Tennant, 36, of White City, is charged in 3rd District Court with four counts of aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony.

A woman told Unified police that she met Tennant on a dating app and went to his residence in June. When she got there, Tennant “pushed her up against the front door and began kissing her,” according to charging documents.

The woman said she told Tennant “that she was not going to sleep with him,” the charges state.

However, Tennant later sexually assaulted her in his bedroom and strangled her with his hands before putting a pillow over her face, according to the charges. “(The woman) said she could not breathe or scream and believed that she was going to die or pass out, and described that if she made sounds, he would press on the pillow harder.”

The woman also told police that there was a rifle leaning against his bedroom wall, “which made her fearful that if she didn’t comply, he would harm her further,” court documents say.

“The defendant is a criminal investigator with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office, which requires that he carry a gun,” prosecutors wrote in the charges. “He’s also known to be a veteran, where he was allegedly a firearms instructor and was also a prior law enforcement officer out of California.”

The Salt Lake County Attorney’s Office is requesting that, among the conditions for Tennant’s pre-trial release, he be required to surrender all his guns and remove any dating apps or websites from his electronics.

---

Read more: University of Utah reports high numbers of rape cases on campus over last year