Derrick Evan Pickering

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1. This Utah woman says she was touched inappropriately during a cosmetic procedure. She’s the fourth to report the medical worker to police., Salt Lake Tribune, February 26, 2024.
2. Utah mom claims nurse practitioner touched her vagina during breast augmentation and said: 'They did a good job sewing you up...it doesn't look like you birthed four kids', Daily Mail, February 27, 2024.
3. Following an after-hours pelvic exam, this UVU nurse was quietly asked to resign, Salt Lake Tribune, May 3, 2024.
4. Former students sue, contending UVU didn't protect them from a medical worker they allege touched them inappropriately, Salt Lake Tribune, October 30, 2024.
5. 2 former UVU students allege nurse sexually assualted them 'under the guise of medical care', ABC4, October 31, 2024.

• 1. This Utah woman says she was touched inappropriately during a cosmetic procedure. She’s the fourth to report the medical worker to police.

  • 26 Feb 2024
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  • Salt Lake Tribune

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• 2. Utah mom claims nurse practitioner touched her vagina during breast augmentation and said: 'They did a good job sewing you up...it doesn't look like you birthed four kids'

  • 27 Feb 2024
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  • Daily Mail

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• 3. Following an after-hours pelvic exam, this UVU nurse was quietly asked to resign

  • 3 May 2024
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  • Salt Lake Tribune

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  In total, four women have reported Derrick Pickering to law enforcement. He has filed a defamation countersuit against one woman, saying she falsely accused him to boost her career as a social media “influencer.”

  --

  By the time nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering left his six-year job in Utah Valley University’s student clinic, two patients had reported him to campus police: One alleged he touched her inappropriately, while a second said she felt he pressured her into having an unnecessary pelvic exam.

  But those reports did not lead to any disciplinary action, according to an open records request to the university. The reason he left the job in February 2021 — revealed in a newly unsealed search warrant — is because campus administrators asked him to resign after he performed a pelvic examination after hours without a medical assistant present.

  The university did not fire Pickering, however. And it doesn’t appear that university officials ever reported the nurse practitioner to licensing officials.

  That meant his care went unscrutinized, and that his patients — and possibly future employers — were left unaware questions had been raised about it. And in the three years since he left UVU, he has twice more been accused of inappropriately touching patients — these times while conducting cosmetic procedures at Belle Medical’s Draper location.

  Pickering was the subject of a February Salt Lake Tribune investigative report, which detailed how these four women went to police but officers were dismissive of the early disclosures, records show — either not fully investigating or telling the first three women they were not describing criminal misconduct.

  The affidavit that supported the request for a search warrant, which was unsealed in March, is part of Draper police’s current investigation after a fourth woman reported Pickering.

  A Draper detective requested two warrants in order to access Pickering’s personnel records and the women’s medical records at UVU and Belle Medical, according to the affidavit. The filing also detailed the detective’s efforts to interview each of the four women, as well as one of Pickering’s former coworkers at UVU. That coworker told police that she knew medical assistants who had refused to work with Pickering because they felt he made patients uncomfortable.

  That affidavit also revealed publicly for the first time that Pickering was asked to resign from his UVU job because he conducted an after-hours pelvic exam with no medical assistant present.

  Scott Trotter, a spokesperson for Utah Valley University, did not answer a list of questions emailed to him about Pickering, including a question about whether UVU officials ever reported him to licensers.

  “While we know there are questions,” Trotter said in a statement, “we do not comment on police reports or personnel matters to follow federal law and respect the privacy of all those involved.”

  Police records and information from Pickering’s attorney indicate that the Division of Professional Licensing has received only one complaint about Pickering, lodged by the second woman who reported him to police. DOPL officials do not confirm or deny whether they’ve received complaints against a licensed professional unless they take disciplinary action.

  Pickering has not been charged with a crime, and his license is in good standing with DOPL. Steve Owens, Pickering’s attorney, said the nurse practitioner “has never sexually touched any patient ever.”

  Owens confirmed that Pickering was asked to leave his UVU job, explaining that the resignation came after he removed a patient’s IUD without a medical assistant in the room. The attorney said the woman’s husband was present during the procedure, which he said the patient requested because of “severe and potentially life-threatening side effects” of the IUD. The attorney said Pickering tried to reschedule the appointment because his medical assistant had called out sick that day, but went forward with the procedure with the woman’s husband in the room acting as a chaperone.

  “Derrick believes the exam occurred while the clinic was still open,” Owens said. “Both patient and husband signed consent forms. The patient continues to see Derrick as her primary care provider.”

  Pickering denies any inappropriate conduct, Owens said, but was asked to resign from the job because a medical assistant was not present during the IUD removal.
  The first report to police

  The search warrant affidavit also gives more detail about the experience of the first woman who reported Pickering to police — details that were not previously public because UVU police officials won’t release the entire police report while Draper police investigate.

  A Draper detective wrote in the affidavit that she interviewed the former student in November with the help of a Korean translator. That student, identified as J.Y. in the police record, told the detective that she moved from Korea to Utah in 2015 to study at UVU.

  She went to the student clinic in September 2015, she told the detective, because she had symptoms of a bladder infection.

  “J.Y. said during the appointment Derrick asked questions about sexual diseases, which she described as ‘not related’ to the symptoms of the bladder infection,” the detective wrote. “She said she had these types of infections previously when she was in Korea, and was given antibiotics to treat the infection and advised to drink fluids. She said that in all the doctor visits she had been to with this issue the doctors ‘never touched my body.’”

  But J.Y. described to the detective how she said Pickering asked her to lie down, and then lifted her shirt and pushed around her belly button. The affidavit says J.Y. said Pickering, who wasn’t wearing medical gloves, then lifted up her underwear and touched her pubic area.

  J.Y. had a friend in the room with her to help translate, she told the detective, and said that while he had “turned around during the exam for privacy,” he glanced over and saw what happened during the exam. She said he encouraged her to make the report to the police.

  But her report didn’t go far — a UVU police officer wrote in a police report that he was unable to contact the alleged victim and closed the case, concluding it was a “misunderstanding due to cultural differences.”

  Owens, Pickering’s attorney, denied that the nurse practitioner did anything wrong during that exam.

  “Derrick knows he did not touch J.Y.’s pubic area,” Owens said, adding that he assessed her bladder — which is above the pubic bone — with his hands by palpation and percussion. He confirmed Pickering didn’t wear gloves, Owens said, adding that “it is common for practitioners not to wear gloves for this type of examination.”

  Owens said J.Y.’s care was investigated by the UVU Equity and Title IX Office and campus police years ago and they “found no wrongdoing.” He added: “J.Y. did not even meet with the police.”
  More reports to police

  Less than a year after J.Y.’s report, C.C., a 27-year-old international student from Peru, came to the clinic in June 2016. She wanted to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and needed a medical exam.

  The woman, whom The Tribune is identifying by her initials to protect her privacy, said in an interview that Pickering was insistent that he do a breast and vaginal exam — and she recalls him telling her he would not sign her missionary paperwork unless she agreed to them. C.C. remembered Pickering telling her that because she was 27 years old, she needed these types of exams.

  C.C. did not want the exams and didn’t think she needed them, she said, but she felt she had no choice but to agree.
  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) C.C., pictured Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, said she felt nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering gave her an unnecessary breast and pelvic exam at the Utah Valley University student clinic in 2016.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) C.C., pictured Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, said she felt nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering gave her an unnecessary breast and pelvic exam at the Utah Valley University student clinic in 2016.

  She said she didn’t realize that something may have been wrong with the exam until 2018, after another UVU nurse practitioner told her those types of exams are not necessary for potential missionaries. According to the search warrant affidavit, that health care worker later told the Draper detective that “the mission physical paperwork does not require a PAP, as an individual has to be sexually active for concerns of cervical cancer, which [C.C.] was not.”

  C.C. reported Pickering to police a few weeks after speaking with the second nurse practitioner. But she said that when she went to law enforcement, she felt the officer thought she was lying or simply complaining.

  Owens, Pickering’s attorney, denied that his client refused to sign her paperwork unless she had a Pap smear done. He said the nurse practitioner followed appropriate medical standards and had “had no incentive other than to take good care of his patients.”

  Pickering also started working at Belle Medical in 2019, according to his attorney. A patient who saw him there for liposuction on her lower stomach in January 2022 also later told police she felt Pickering repeatedly touched her breast inappropriately during the treatment; Pickering denies touching her breast, Owens said, adding that she may have felt a cord that was attached to the surgical instrument.

  [Read more: This Utah woman says she was touched inappropriately during a cosmetic procedure. She’s the fourth to report the medical worker to police.]

  The woman reported Pickering to Draper police the day after her procedure, but recently told The Tribune she felt dismissed by law enforcement. She said a detective thanked her for reporting Pickering and said “this will be really helpful if anybody else comes forward.”

  By that time, there had already been two other reports: the two women before her who had gone to UVU police in Utah County. But no one at the Draper Police Department, in Salt Lake County, knew that then. Draper police officials have said they did not learn about the UVU cases until recently, as a detective investigated the fourth woman’s report.
  A defamation countersuit

  That woman, Chelsi Rasmussen, went to Belle Medical in November 2021 for a cosmetic procedure where fat would be liposuctioned from other parts of her body and transferred to her breasts.

  She recounted in a civil lawsuit how she says Pickering moved her paper underwear to the side during the procedure, touched her vagina and told her that “they did a good job sewing you up, little to no scarring.” The lawsuit also alleges that he told her, “it doesn’t look like you birthed four kids.” Rasmussen looked over to a nurse who was also in the room, according to her suit, but the woman had a laptop propped up and Rasmussen couldn’t see her face.
  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chelsi Rasmussen is suing a nurse practitioner who she says inappropriately touched her during a 2021 cosmetic procedure at Belle Medical, a Draper medical spa.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chelsi Rasmussen is suing a nurse practitioner who she says inappropriately touched her during a 2021 cosmetic procedure at Belle Medical, a Draper medical spa.

  Rasmussen grappled internally for more than a year with what she says happened, she said, before she reported Pickering to Draper police last August and sued him in civil court a month later. The Tribune generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but Rasmussen agreed to the use of her name.

  Pickering recently filed his response to her lawsuit, denying he sexually touched her. In a bolded paragraph at the beginning of the court filing, Pickering’s attorney noted that Rasmussen followed up with the same Belle Medical clinic 12 times after the procedure and never disclosed inappropriate conduct. Owens further wrote that Rasmussen had another cosmetic procedure done by Pickering six months after that first procedure where she says he touched her inappropriately.

  Pickering also counter sued Rasmussen for defamation, alleging that she falsely accused him of sexual assault in order to elevate her career as an online “influencer” and to help her win the Mrs. Utah America crown in March. He accused her in the countersuit of making a “false police report,” and defaming him in comments made to DOPL and in interviews she did with a Tribune reporter.

  Her comments have damaged Pickering personally and professionally, his attorney wrote, and has caused him to lose patients. Along with asking for compensatory and punitive damages, Pickering has asked a judge to issue an injunction preventing Rasmussen from speaking publicly about allegations of sexual assault against him.

  “[Rasmussen’s] statements defamed Mr. Pickering by calling into question his honesty, integrity, virtue and reputation,” his attorney wrote. “They have caused him public hatred, contempt, and ridicule from those who follow [Rasmussen] on social media or read the [Tribune] story. When one Googles Defendant’s name, the story appears at or near the top.”

  Adam Sorenson, Rasmussen’s attorney, said in a statement that Pickering’s countersuit is one reason why it’s “so hard and frightening” for alleged sexual assault survivors to come forward and speak out about their experiences.

  “Not only do they face having to re-live traumatic experiences as they tell their story, they face being sued for defamation by the person they are speaking out against,” he said. “Trauma is not always logical and cannot be defined in one or two sentences, nor can the response to it be stereotyped. It is far more nuanced, particularly when the trauma is inflicted by someone you are supposed to be able to trust.”

• 4. Former students sue, contending UVU didn't protect them from a medical worker they allege touched them inappropriately

  • 30 Oct 2024
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  • Salt Lake Tribune

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  Five women have accused nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering of inappropriate touching in police reports and civil lawsuits. He denies he ever sexually touched his patients.

  --

  Over the last six years, S.D. has often thought about what she says happened inside an exam room at Utah Valley University’s student clinic.

  She remembers how a nurse practitioner opened her thin, yellow paper gown to expose her chest, she said, and how he gave her a breast exam — her first — that was unlike any medical care she has experienced since.

  At the beginning of the exam, she said, he palpated her breasts with his fingertips. But then he ran his fingers around her areolas, she alleges, before jiggling her breast while cupping it in his hand.

  S.D. said she has long reflected about how the exam in 2018 felt off, and wondered, “What medical reason did he have to jiggle my breast? What medical reason would he have to touch my nipples like that?”

  The touching that S.D. described in a recent interview and has also recounted in a civil lawsuit is in contrast to professional standards for gynecologists, which advise medical workers to use only their fingertips during a breast exam.

  S.D. said she had dismissed her feelings of discomfort until earlier this year, when she was scrolling through TikTok and she saw a post by The Salt Lake Tribune. It detailed an investigative report about a nurse practitioner who had been reported to police by four patients accusing him of sexual assault. As soon as she saw a photo of UVU’s campus in the post, S.D. said, she was certain it was about the same medical worker who examined her: Derrick Pickering.

  “I felt sick,” she recalled. “I didn’t even have to pull [the article] up. I pulled it up, and it was him.”

  S.D. has now joined another former Utah Valley University student in a federal lawsuit against both Pickering and the college in Orem. They argue in the suit that UVU did not protect them from the nurse practitioner, who they allege conducted unnecessary medical exams for his own sexual gratification.

  Before S.D. went into that exam room in 2018, two other student patients had reported Pickering to campus police — including the other plaintiff in the suit. Pickering remained employed at UVU until 2021, when the university quietly asked him to resign after he conducted a pelvic exam after hours without a medical assistant present.

  S.D. is now the fifth woman to accuse Pickering in reports to police or in civil lawsuits. Draper police have been investigating Pickering during the past year, but he has not been charged criminally and his license remains in good standing with the Division of Professional Licensing. The Salt Lake Tribune generally doesn’t name alleged victims of sexual abuse, and is identifying several women in this story by their initials.

  UVU spokesperson Scott Trotter said in a statement that the university is aware of the lawsuit and “takes these matters very seriously.”

  “Our priority is the well-being and success of our students, faculty, and staff and we are committed to maintaining a safe and supportive environment for them,” he said. “As this is an ongoing legal matter, we are unable to provide further comments.”

  Because Pickering is being sued in his capacity as a university employee, he’s being represented by a lawyer within the Utah attorney general’s office. That attorney, Adam Wentz, said Pickering denies the lawsuit’s accusations and said the medical worker never deviated from medical guidelines and standards, noting female medical staff were always present during these exams.

  Wentz said in a statement that he plans to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and hopes “that any unwarranted damage to Mr. Pickering’s reputation will be quickly remedied.”

  “While Mr. Pickering and the Attorney General’s Office are sympathetic to anyone who feels they have been an assault victim, a thorough investigation of the facts made clear to us there was no assault in this case, and Mr. Pickering categorically denies any wrongdoing,” Wentz said. “He has cared for hundreds of women in his ten years as a nurse practitioner and has been praised by many for his compassionate approach.”
  The first two reports

  University officials said Pickering began seeing patients at UVU’s student health center in February 2015. Seven months later, a student identified in public records as J.Y. alleged to campus police that he had touched her inappropriately during a medical exam.

  It doesn’t appear the police investigated thoroughly — in a report, an officer wrote that he was unable to contact the alleged victim and closed the case, concluding it was a “misunderstanding due to cultural differences.” Steve Owens, another attorney for Pickering, has previously denied these accusations and said Pickering was never informed of this report at that time.

  Less than a year after J.Y.’s report, C.C., a 27-year-old international student from Peru, came to the clinic in June 2016. She wanted to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and needed a medical exam.

  The woman said in an interview that Pickering was insistent that he do a breast and vaginal exam — and she said she recalls him telling her he would not sign her missionary paperwork unless she agreed to them. C.C. remembered Pickering telling her that because she was 27 years old, she needed these types of exams, she said.

  C.C. did not want the exams and didn’t think she needed them, she said, but she felt she had no choice but to agree. She said she didn’t realize that something may have been wrong with the exam until 2018, she said, after another UVU nurse practitioner told her those types of exams are not necessary for potential missionaries.

  C.C. reported Pickering to police a few weeks after speaking with the second nurse practitioner. But she recalled in an interview that when she went to law enforcement, she felt the officer thought she was lying or simply complaining. Campus police closed her case, according to a police report, and the director of the medical center told an officer that he believed Pickering followed recommended medical guidelines.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) C.C., pictured Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, said she felt nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering gave her an unnecessary breast and pelvic exam at the Utah Valley University student clinic in 2016. She is one of four women who have reported Pickering to police for sexual assault.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) C.C., pictured Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, said she felt nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering gave her an unnecessary breast and pelvic exam at the Utah Valley University student clinic in 2016. She is one of four women who have reported Pickering to police for sexual assault.

  Owens denied that Pickering refused to sign her paperwork unless she agreed to a Pap smear, which involves collecting cells from the cervix to test for cancer. He said the nurse practitioner followed appropriate medical standards and had “had no incentive other than to take good care of his patients.”

  C.C. has joined S.D. in suing Utah Valley University and Pickering in federal court, in the lawsuit that attorney Adam Sorenson filed in September. In the suit, C.C. alleges that several mandatory reporters failed to report her claims to UVU’s Title IX Office, as required by law, and that the university failed to conduct an investigation.

  “To compound its failures,” Sorenson wrote in the lawsuit, “UVU told [C.C.] what she experienced was not abuse, thereby fraudulently concealing the criminal acts she endured.”

  An unexpected exam

  S.D. hadn’t planned to get a breast exam or a Pap smear when she went into the student clinic during the fall semester in 2018, she said. She was 25 years old, and was hoping to connect with a care provider who could fill her prescriptions for her mental health. She also worried she may have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and noted that in paperwork she filled out before her exam.

  She also answered “yes” to a question in that paperwork that asked whether she had been sexually assaulted in the past, she said. She remembers Pickering referencing that question in the exam room, she said, and asking if she had been tested for a sexually transmitted disease since the assault. She had not.

  “He stood up and was walking towards the door and opened the door. And he’s like, ‘Well, we can do it right now if you want,’” she recalled.

  S.D. said she was flustered and agreed, and Pickering handed her a paper gown and asked her to change. When he came back into the exam room, she said, there was a nurse with him.

  But she felt like his body was blocking the nurse’s view of how he touched her breasts during the exam — touching which S.D. now says made her feel uncomfortable. After touching her breasts, Pickering conducted a Pap smear, she said.

  S.D. said she left the exam feeling confused and embarrassed. Pickering was the first person who had touched these sensitive areas of her body since she was sexually assaulted, she said, so she thought to herself that her discomfort could have been a reaction to that.

  For that reason, she said, she never reported to any officials prior to finding out about the other women’s reports.

  ‘They could have kept me safe’

  Pickering left his job at UVU more than two years later. Owens, his attorney, has said that his client was asked to resign after he removed a patient’s IUD without a medical assistant in the room.

  The attorney said the woman’s husband was present during the procedure, which he said the patient requested because of “severe and potentially life-threatening side effects” of the IUD. The attorney said Pickering tried to reschedule the appointment because his medical assistant had called out sick that day, but went forward with the procedure with the woman’s husband acting as a chaperone.
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  S.D. said in a recent interview that she felt betrayed when she learned that other women had reported similar experiences with him prior to her appointment.

  “It’s extremely upsetting that they knew and that they could have protected me,” she said. “They could have kept me safe.”

  Since leaving UVU, Pickering has twice been reported to police for alleged inappropriate touching while working at a Draper medical spa, Belle Medical.

  A patient who saw him there for liposuction on her lower stomach in January 2022 told police she felt Pickering repeatedly touched her breast inappropriately during the treatment. Pickering denies touching her breast, Owens said, adding that she may have felt a cord that was attached to the surgical instrument.

  The woman reported Pickering to Draper police the day after her procedure. She and some of the students who reported to police were reinterviewed by a Draper detective after another patient, Chelsi Rasmussen, accused Pickering in police reports and in a civil lawsuit last year of touching her inappropriately during a November 2021 procedure.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chelsi Rasmussen is suing a nurse practitioner who she says inappropriately touched her during a 2021 cosmetic procedure at Belle Medical, a Draper medical spa.

  (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chelsi Rasmussen is suing a nurse practitioner who she says inappropriately touched her during a 2021 cosmetic procedure at Belle Medical, a Draper medical spa.

  Rasmussen, who has agreed to be publicly named, had gone to Belle Medical for a cosmetic procedure where fat would be liposuctioned from other parts of her body and transferred to her breasts; she alleges in her civil lawsuit that Pickering touched her vagina and made comments about her body.

  Pickering has filed a countersuit against Rasmussen, denying he sexually touched her and accused her of making false allegations to boost her career as an online influencer. The lawsuit is still pending.

• 5. 2 former UVU students allege nurse sexually assualted them 'under the guise of medical care'

  • 31 Oct 2024
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  • ABC4

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  OREM, Utah (ABC4) — Utah Valley University and one of its former healthcare providers are at the center of new allegations of sexual misconduct after two former students claimed the healthcare provider “disguised sexual abuse under the guise of medical care.”

  In a lawsuit filed in September, two Jane Doe students allege Derrick Pickering took advantage of his position as a healthcare provider and their vulnerability to sexually assault them in 2016 and 2018.

  Both alleged victims describe going to the University Health Center for a regular examination. One woman was reportedly seeking a physical examination in order to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The other woman was seeking to establish a regular healthcare provider to manage her needed prescriptions.

  In both cases, the women stated Pickering made it feel also though a breast exam and pap smear were required. According to the lawsuit, Pickering would go on to conduct both exams, allegedly inappropriately touching the students while completing the exams.
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  The two victims said Pickering made them feel uncomfortable. When the first victim reported the complaint, campus police and Student Health Services dismissed the complaint saying there was no criminal matter. The second victim realized only years later that the “weird and awkward appointment” was abuse after several other women came forward against Pickering years later.

  “Pickering’s actions were not medically necessary,” the lawsuit alleges. “They were acts of sexual battery which he knowingly and intentionally performed for no other reason other than his own sexual gratification.”

  Utah Valley University spokesperson Scott Trotter told ABC4.com that the university was aware of the lawsuit and it takes the matters very seriously.

  “Our priority is the well-being and success of our students, faculty, and staff and we are committed to maintaining a safe and supportive environment for them,” UVU said in a statement. “We cannot comment beyond this given it is an ongoing legal matter.”

  Pickering has not been charged with any criminal conduct as of Thursday, Oct. 31, and his Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) license remains in good standing with the Division of Professional Licensing.