A state Senate candidate from Orem is facing a sexual abuse charge, with prosecutors accusing him of assaulting a woman last summer, according to court records.
Brandon Beckham of Orem, who has filed to run against state Sen. Keith Grover in the GOP primary, was charged with a second-degree felony.
The start of the 2022 legislative session kicks off at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. Brandon Beckham met up with the woman, an acquaintance, to watch a movie that day, charging documents state. The woman told police that she walked out of the room and returned to find him in his underwear with a blanket spread out on the floor, according to the charging documents. He aggressively told her to give him a massage, she later recounted to law enforcement.
She agreed to massage him, but Beckham made additional demands, pulled her clothes off and touched her in an unwanted manner, the court records state. The woman told authorities that she asked Beckham to stop, according to the court records, but he said “she was being too conservative” and kept going.Beckham later admitted in a phone call with the woman that he was “‘wild’ and that ‘he had gone too far’” and apologized a number of times, according to the charging documents.
Utah County prosecutors charged him in late February with forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony. The charges were