As Ohioans, we must commit to ending human trafficking and sexual violence. Effective prevention begins with understanding how violence occurs in familiar relationships and everyday settings, and addressing the conditions that allow exploitation and abuse to take hold. We urge you to make prevention of sexual violence and human trafficking a priority for Ohio by investing in community prevention, strengthening early intervention, and coordinating a statewide public health response.
Prevention means recognizing risks in our schools, families, relationships, workplaces, and communities. It also means strengthening protective factors such as safe relationships, stable housing, and access to support while building capacity to respond before violence occurs. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have been working on that challenge for years.
Preventing violence is beyond the responsibility of any one organization or system.
Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and the Collaborative to End Human Trafficking bring complementary experience to this work. Preventing violence is not the responsibility of any one organization or system. It requires communities, service providers, schools, health care providers, law enforcement, government, and other partners to recognize risk, strengthen protective factors, share knowledge, and act earlier.
Northeast Ohio has spent years building that collaboration, and Ohio can build on that experience to strengthen violence prevention statewide.
That experience reveals where state leadership can have impact. Ohio has an opportunity to support organizations responding to sexual violence and human trafficking, and strengthen systems and strategies that can prevent violence in the first place.
Recommendations
- Invest in prevention and make prevention funding accessible. Ohio has already taken steps to recognize the importance of prevention, including requiring schools to provide age-appropriate prevention education. But requirements alone do not create the capacity to deliver effective prevention. Ohio should provide sustainable support for evidence-informed prevention education, including human trafficking prevention, and make state resources easier for qualified community organizations and schools to access. This investment should also support organizations that convene partners and build local prevention capacity.
- Strengthen early intervention. People often interact with schools, health care providers, social services, law enforcement, and other systems before they connect with a specialized organization. Ohio can help those systems recognize warning signs earlier and connect people safely to support. Strengthening coordination, screening, referral, and intervention can help communities act before violence occurs. Ohio should also support seamless, trauma-informed services so survivors can access coordinated care and ongoing support wherever they seek help.
- Build a statewide public-health approach to prevention. Ohio does not need to start from scratch. State agencies, local governments, schools, health systems, law enforcement agencies, and community organizations are already doing important work to prevent sexual violence and human trafficking. Ohio can strengthen that work by coordinating efforts, measuring the problem, analyzing risk and protective factors, investing in approaches that work, and expanding them where they show results.
Ohio has the expertise and community partnerships to make meaningful progress. As Governor, you can bring those pieces together by strengthening prevention, helping communities intervene earlier, and bringing existing efforts together to do more of what works. We stand ready to work with you, alongside the many Ohioans and organizations working to prevent sexual violence and human trafficking.
Sincerely,
Nicole McKinney-Johnson, President & CEO, Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
Kirsti Mouncey, President & CEO, Collaborative to End Human Trafficking
