A Utah Karen who was caught on camera confronting a 19-year-old girl about the size of her miniskirt after yanking it down in a steakhouse.

Ida Lorenzo, 49, had faced a Class A misdemeanor charge of sexual battery following the viral incident at Sakura Japanese Steakhouse in St. George, but entered a plea deal on July 30.

As part of the deal, Lorenzo – a former legal secretary at the state Attorney General’s office – pleaded no contest to a reduced class B misdemeanor charge of ‘knowingly and intentionally touch[ing] the buttocks of another person under the circumstances she should have known would cause affront or alarm,’ according to ABC 4.

She will now be held with no sentence for one year so long as she complies with the terms of the agreement – which stipulate she is to have no contact with the victim – and commits no new offenses.

After the one year is up, the criminal case against her could be dismissed.

But if she fails to abide by the terms of the agreement, a warrant could be issued for her arrest, her guilty plea will be accepted and she could face a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail.

According to a record of the hearing obtained by Utah News Dispatch, the victim in the case supported the plea deal. 

Lorenzo was seen in a viral TikTok video pulling down the 19-year-old girl’s skirt and then flashing a badge while asserting, ‘I happen to work for the state.’

She told the alleged victim that if she has to watch her ‘a** cheeks hanging out again’ and see her pubic hair, she would call Child Protective Services. 

Meanwhile, the young victim’s friends can be heard telling Lorenzo: ‘You do not get to touch her,’ and they later accused her of sexually assaulting the victim.

Lorenzo – a former legal secretary at the state Attorney General’s office – pleaded no contest to a reduced class B misdemeanor charge of ‘knowingly and intentionally touch[ing] the buttocks of another person under the circumstances she should have known would cause affront or alarm’

But the incident only came to the authorities attention after Lorenzo reported it to police herself on the same night. 

She told police that the teenager’s skirt was ‘hiked above her vagina and butt,’ exposing her pubic hair, ABC4 reported. 

Lorenzo also reportedly explained that she pulled the skirt down as young children were present and the restaurant staff did not act. 

After footage of the incident was posted online Lorenzo phoned 911 again to claim that a ‘threat on her life’ had been made as she is a state employee, according to the police report seen by ABC.

She told police she first asked the young woman to pull her skirt down but that she was ignored, and therefore acted herself. 

When asked why she thought it was appropriate to touch the girl, Lorenzo reportedly replied that she only touched her skirt.  

But the teenager had also contacted police following the incident to report that she had been ‘sexually assaulted while in the lobby’ of the St. George restaurant.

She was seen in body camera footage telling officers how she could feel ‘someone’s cold hands against my skin’ before turning around – coming face to face with her accoster.

Police-worn body camera footage shows Lorenzo defended her actions to cops

The teen recalled how she initially thought it was one of her friends having fun, and how stunned she was to see it was a middle-aged woman whom she did not know.

‘Not even the physical side of things, but mentally,’ she said of the lasting impact left by the ordeal. ‘I’m struggling so much with weight problems.’

Others who filled out witness statements shared a similar account of what happened, cops said – paving the way for Lorenzo’s arrest the next day.

The teenager added the incident – which was recorded by friend CC Snow – made her feel insecure about her body.

‘It’s outrageous to me,’ she says in the clip. 

But when police later questioned and arrested Lorenzo, she defended her actions. 

She told officers she first asked the young woman to pull her skirt down but that she was ignored, and therefore acted herself. 

When asked why she thought it was appropriate to touch the girl, Lorenzo reportedly replied that she only touched her skirt. 

An officer then told her that she had still ‘engaged in criminal behavior by touching the female’s clothing, and her behavior was not appropriate.’

The officer explained that touching someone’s private areas was against the law even if just touching clothing.

She then seemed startled when officers said they would arrest her for sexual assault

Still, the former state employee seemed shocked that she would be arrested for the caught-on-camera incident – claiming she thought the teen was nude underneath her skirt.

‘You are going to arrest me?’ she says in police-worn body camera footage, during which she reenacted how she ‘harmlessly’ tugged at the girl’s skirt.

‘I should have called the police at that time. I should have reported it,’ she adds, in footage filmed from the St George Police Department on April 22.

‘You would do whatever you needed to do, but that wasn’t going to resolve the issue,’ she goes on to claim. ‘It would have taken you probably forever to get there.’

She goes on to claim that her intervention garnered a ‘standing ovation’ from those in attendance. 

Then, when asked why she took the matter into her own hands, she responds: ‘[I was] protecting the kids by covering the private parts.’

The officer, in turn, replies: ‘Correct, but that’s not your job to do.’

Lorenzo is seen being walked to a police car following her arrest on April 24

Following her arrest, Lorenzo was fired from the state Attorney General’s office.

She later blamed her firing on ‘circumstances beyond my control’ in a GoFundMe to provide some form of income until she lands a new job. 

‘My career and sole means of income is currently on hold for an indefinite period, and it is urgent that I reach out to try and raise funds to help support my two sons and myself during this difficult period,’ Lorenzo wrote, pleading for sympathy.

‘I’m a single mother and I’ve never asked for any help until now. My son is a suicide survivor (bullied in middle school) and I am a survivor of domestic violence. For the first time in my life, I myself could use the help. Any amount of your generosity would be so very appreciated.’

If only we were given a sign.

How about these:

And the response of Utah’s political class?

Nothing.

Actually, worse than nothing. State and local officials, and our congressional delegation, can be relied upon to actively oppose every effort of the federal government and others to slow the climate emergency.

What are we waiting for? A plague of frogs?

Utah leaders go out of their way to stand against cleaner energy

Utah could be a national, even a world, leader in turning the tide against the destruction of our natural environment. We not only have everything to lose from the status quo, we also have a great deal to gain — environmentally and financially — from a new green economy.

Utah is naturally poised to be the mother load of solar, wind and geothermal energy. The transition to renewables is happening, but it would be moving a lot faster if our state leaders would embrace it as the cash cow it could be instead of bull-headedly devoting so much of their time and your money clinging to the dead-end extractive fossil-fuel economy.

Rocky Mountain Power did have plans to phase out its carbon-belching Hunter and Huntington power plants in Emery County, moving toward more renewable generation and storage, by 2032. But last spring the multi-state utility giant, sheltered by Utah laws that push utilities to stick with coal by allowing them to pass the higher costs on to consumers, announced that it would keep those plants in operation as far into the future as 2042.

The Intermountain Power Agency, a utility owned by a consortium of local governments around Utah, has had to constantly fight off legislative attacks on its plans to shift from coal to a clean hydrogen-based system that has great potential for limitless, and profitable, energy production.

Seven counties in eastern Utah, backed by the state, are literally going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of an awful idea to build a new rail link from Uinta Basin oil fields to supposedly spur a five-fold increase in the area’s petroleum output.

Utah state officials are also dragging the U.S. Bureau of Land Management into court, again, over the agency’s plans to start doing what it should have done all along — count conservation as a good use of public land.

Apparently, if you hold public office in Utah, you just don’t think it’s hot enough, or the air is dirty enough, around here. If the people feel otherwise, they should say so.

State efforts to save the Great Salt Lake need to be accelerated

A couple of good snowfall years helped the levels of the Great Salt Lake recover somewhat from their recent record lows. But it still fell short of some expert predictions.

Gov. Spencer Cox and the Utah Legislature are not ignorant of the situation. Laws have been passed and executive orders signed to allow the state to buy water rights from mostly agricultural users, to grant more than $200 million in state funds to boost water-saving efforts of farmers and canal operators and to pause the granting any new rights.

Benighted plans to dam sections of the Bear River upstream of the lake apparently have been abandoned. The Legislature acted to slow the kinds of mineral extraction that depletes the lake.

Lawmakers are admitting that they know what they don’t know — how much of the water supposedly being saved from improved agricultural practices is actually getting to the lake. They have tasked various executive branch departments to get out of their silos to work together and find out.

Early in 2023, the Legislature put up $275,000 to buy gadgets to improve the state’s ability to monitor the pollutants that rise from the Great Salt Lakebed. As of this summer, the money hadn’t been spent and the monitors hadn’t been installed.

Now that state officials cannot, and largely do not, claim ignorance about the risks of a shrinking lake, more must be done.

Allocating more state money to buy or lease more private water rights, mostly from farmers, can, if it makes our conservative leaders feel better, be framed as a “free-market solution.”

Actually there is no other choice, as government in the United States is constitutionally prohibited from seizing private property, even for the most necessary of public purposes, without compensation.

It will be the best money the state of Utah ever spent.