Featured: Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism | How has Ohio Stepped Up Measures to Combat Sexual Violence?

For one Ohio trafficking victim, the opening of the accredited rape crisis center at the YWCA Dayton last year proved crucial to quelling her inner demons, which lingered long after the physical pain subsided. For years, her abuser raped and beat her daily. She must never tell anyone, he threatened, because it would “open Pandora’s box.” Discussing her ordeal in counseling made her feel like it would open that box of monsters and shadows.

Her counselor, however, reminded her that the bottom or Pandora’s box held the light of hope. In her private sessions, he taught her to visualize walking down a hallway and opening doors to seek that light and the letters to spell the word “hope” in each room she imagined. As she transitioned out of her care at the YWCA she revealed that, for the first time when she did the exercise, she was finally able to identify all of the letters.

Dayton’s facility represents one of 14 new rape crisis centers that have opened in Ohio during the past five years, increasing the statewide total to 31, according to Rosa Beltre, Executive Director of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, the umbrella organization for all rape crisis centers in the state that oversees accreditation.

Read the full story here: https://eyeonohio.com/how-has-ohio-stepped-up-measures-to-combat-sexual-violence/