Citizens Leadership
Academy
“It's not always easy to constantly be thinking about doing the right thing, but it's something you have to do. I make sure that if I make mistakes, I fix them."
- Rachel Dissell
Protective Orders
After she recovered, Johanna Orozco lobbied the state legislature to protect other teens who may be in her situation. The bill allows teens who have been stalked, assaulted or sexually abused by another teen to ask for a protection order. It gives juvenile court judges the ability to give protection orders to teens in abusive dating relationships. For more information, visit cleveland.com/johanna.
Rachel Dissell
Investigative Reporter for
The Plain Dealer
by Donastie Hopkins, crew 4
In the last 20 years, more than 4,000 rape cases have gone unsolved in Cleveland. Sadly much of the DNA evidence in these cases has gone untested. Law enforcement didn’t do anything with it. That’s when somebody finally started to stand up for these girls and take control. It’s time that we recognize the person who started this all. Her name is Rachel Dissell.
Dissell, 34, is an investigative reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She is also a professor at Kent State University. Dissell has tackled gigantic issues, yet she is very kind and generous. During her cases she has seen and dealt with lots of things. Even when things get emotional and heartbreaking, she stills stays professional and does her job.
In 2009, Dissell discovered that in many cases, DNA evidence had not been tested, so she contacted the law enforcement to ask how many cases. They responded, “I don’t know.” Dissell continued to contact law enforcement over and over and over again until they promised to start testing the evidence. It took almost two years just to count. After that they started testing the evidence and now have leads 1,000 of the 4,000 cases. Dissell’s diligence shows that she is really extraordinary at her job and really cares about her victims. Dissell said, ”I think it’s important as a reporter to be the voice of the voiceless.” That’s really something that she did and stuck to. The attorney general, who is in charge of law enforcement for the state, decided to have everybody to send their evidence in from all over Ohio and not just Cleveland.
In 2007, Dissell wrote a story about a young women named Johanna Orozco. Orozco had been in a relationship where he started off very nice then began to hit her. Orozco broke up with young man, and he came back and shot her in the face with a shotgun. The whole bottom of her face was gone. Dissell and her crew wrote a story about Orozco so that it could be read by middle-school students. In middle-school and high-school health classes around the state, they got to talk about teen dating abuse so they know the warning signs. When Orozco got better, she testified at the Ohio State Legislature, and they passed a law that juveniles with a boyfriend or girlfriend who is abusing them can get court order to protect them.
Dissell decided she wanted to be a reporter when she was in high school and a teacher suggested she work for the school newspaper. Dissell said us that in her head, she thought, ‘I don't know if this is for me,’ but when people told her that she would get to ask questions, she thought, ‘I want people to have to answer my questions when I ask them.”
Dissell is a very busy person dealing with her job as a teacher at Kent State and her job as an investigative reporter. Additionally, she has a three-year-old son, a nine-year-old niece, and new baby born in May.