Ohio may shame us, but Cleveland is a rock star

People don’t understand my devotion to the Cleve, but man we’re awesome. Sure, serial killers, men who kidnap and hold women for a decade, and teams who can’t win for losing, but everyone once in a while we pull our shit together. See Cleveland’s problem with sexual violence hardly started with Castro, we had the discovery of Sowell’s collection of corpses in 2009, which caused fear throughout Cleveland, but was then escalated by other serial rapists working in the area. Amanda Marcotte had a great line in her piece, “Clevelanders have been repeatedly reminded of how many monsters live among us, attacking women under the radar, and understandably, they are worried.” Preach. You know it is bad when friends who usually look on the bright side bring it up.

However, it may be a brand new day in Cleveland for rapists because Cleveland is stepping up their game. In a move that can only be described as the resurrection of Elliot Ness from Lake View Cemetery, the Cleveland authorities are taking names, kicking ass, and finally indicting rapists. The Plain Dealer reports:

“Cuyahoga County prosecutors and investigators are revisiting decades-old unsolved rape cases, using DNA evidence to connect serial rapes, tracking down victims and sending cases to grand juries for indictment—often racing against a 20-year statute of limitations.”

 The Plain Dealer has been increasing the pressure for authorities to do something about the rapes in the past few years. In 2011, Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine requested the efforts to connect cases and indict, and the results have been an assembly line of indictments, usually against men who are accused of spending decades attacking women without facing any repercussions.Yes, that is a thing.

The Plain Dealer created a page dedicated to the indictments so readers can follow those since March; it also includes all the stories about the DNA testing. (The photo below is from the page.) We know most rapists are serial rapists, and as a result many of these indictments open up multiple cold cases. Cleveland has set aside about 3,000 untouched rape kits to be processed. That is a lot of work, but with results like this people can’t really argue. The stats from the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center (though dated 2008) put 1,366 sexual assaults and child endangerment cases being reported to the Cleveland PD. Because about 60% of rape cases go unreported, we’re probably looking at more than 3,000 rapes per year (a conservative figure).Dealing with rape kits has been a difficult undertaking nationally usually because of the backlog and the mishandling of the kits in the first place. However, the success in Cleveland is an indication of how powerfully effective rape kits can be if handled properly and the authorities bother to use them.

No would be an appropriate time for “Cleveland Rocks.” The image below is of those who have been indicted. I’m pretty pumped about this given how rare it is to report anything positive from the Cleve.