Rachel Dissell

 

Investigative Reporter for
The Plain Dealer

 

by Shayla Boiner, crew 3

 

 

Do you know anyone who has not had justice in his or her life?

There are people who work hard to get that justice, and they are not always “the law.” Reporters do an extraordinary amount of work also. For example, in Cleveland, for 20 years a lot of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) evidence in sexual-assault cases wasn't being tested. That is, until Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell a women who had been living in the city since 2002 and has spent majority of her life here, found out and decided to do something about it.

 

One of her most extraordinary cases started when she discovered that the evidence in rape cases in Cleveland was not being tested. She found out by doing what reporters do, asking questions. Dissell, 34, and her crew would call and call and bug law enforcement until they counted how much was not tested. It took them almost two years to just count the untested cases – 4,000 in total. Dissell bothered them until they agreed to test the evidence. Law enforcement announced in April that they already have leads in 1,000 cases, meaning they could solve these unsolved cases. Dissell researched a little more and found that most untested evidence was mostly in cases reported by African-American women who lived on the East side of Cleveland. “It’s not only a crime issue, it’s also a civil rights issue,” explained Dissell.

 

Another important case that Dissell worked on in 2007 was an eight-part series about a young woman named Johanna Orozco. Her relationship was good at first, but then her boyfriend started to hit her she didn't tell anyone. She stood up for herself and broke up with him, but he came back and shot her in the face the whole bottom of her face was shot off with a shot gone. Dissell wrote the story so that it could be read by middle-school students. When Orozco recovered, she testified and they passed a law that juveniles in an abusive relationship can get court protection. They made sure it got sent to all of the middle schools in Ohio so students could learn about warning signs if they see relationship abuse with their friends or themselves. That way, they can do something about it so what happened to Orozco won't happen to them. This is an example of some of the work Dissell does to assist others.  

 

Dissell’s job as a reporter that is never the same every day. She described, “There is no typical day for me. Right now, I'm following the court schedule a lot, but even the courts don't stick with their schedule. If some news breaks, I will travel there.” While she is chasing news, she has a three-year-old son and a baby on the way. Also, she is a journalism professor at Kent State University.  One day she worked with her students for 18 hours because gunshots went off during class. They were on lockdown so she said this was a perfect opportunity to work on reporting on breaking news. Dissell was there trying to help them get the reliable information.

 

Dissell believes the profession she has is very important and that she has to be very responsible because she is the voice of the community. She said she would like to be a reporter for the rest of her life. To her, it means constantly doing the fair thing because you know people are relying on you for your honesty. Still, she is human so she will care about the people in her stories. “If I’m reporting on somebody that had a tragedy in their life of something, it certainly can impact me as a person,” she explained.

 

Even though she is a superior reporter now, shestill wishes she had done better in English class, If she could give advice to her younger self, it would be, “Read! Read! Read! The more I read, the better I can get at writing my stories,” she explained.