(C) Ohio Capital Journal
This unaltered story was originally published by Ohio Capital Journal
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Bill would require testing of an untold number of rape kits from human trafficking victims in Ohio [1]
['Morgan Trau', 'More From Author', '- May']
Date: 2022-05-19 00:00:00
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
Ohio doesn’t have a requirement to test rape kits when investigating human trafficking cases, but a bill in the House would change that.
House Bill 390 applies the current law for preserving and cataloging evidence to sexual assault examination (SAE) kits to victims and survivors of trafficking.
It was introduced by state Reps. Laura Lanese, a Republican from Grove City, and Marilyn John, a Republican from Richland County.
Ohio consistently ranks in the top states in the country for trafficking cases, but the Human Trafficking Task Force said it is getting worse.
The state has already reported 450 cases of human trafficking, according to the Bureau of Justice. That, per-capita, makes Ohio the fourth worst state — behind only Nevada, Mississippi and Florida.
But after getting a sexual assault exam, advocates say that survivors and victims face even more hurdles.
“Why are you not included if you are a victim — you are a victim of a crime,” Rosa Beltré, executive director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence (OAESV), said.
The kits are required to be tested and submitted for evidence in other crimes, like murders or general sexual assault, but not human trafficking, she said.
This could be due to stigma or losing track of the kit and not testing until time is up, she added.
“I was not either believed or credible, or it all depended on who collected or how, or what district or was it important,” she said. “Or that there was no opportunity, the statute limitation had expired.”
Attorney General Dave Yost said it is more about the novelty of the law.
“Those other offenses have existed a lot longer, Trafficking in Persons is a relatively new statute,” he told News 5. “So this is modernizing the existing guidelines to keep up with the way the world is changing.”
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