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Ohio Attorney General Offers Grant Money for Victims of Sexual Assault

Every two minutes someone in the United States is sexually assaulted, and the Centers for Disease Control estimates 743,000 Ohio women are survivors of rape. With the high-profile Steubenville rape case just a few days ago, Ohio's attorney general says he wants to provide grant money for new regional coordinators to oversee comprehensive services for victims of sexual assault. Attorney General Mike DeWine says a study of Ohio’s 88 counties showed 52 of them don’t offer such programs.

DEWINE: "Some counties have a patchwork of services, and other counties have few or no services at all. It should not matter, it should not matter, it must not matter what county you live in. If you are a victim of crime anywhere in the state of Ohio, you deserve access to the most comprehensive and most complete services possible."

The five-year, $1.5 million project focuses in its first year on expanding services to Crawford, Meigs, Perry and Wyandot counties. Two Republican state lawmakers are proposing a bill to levy a $100 fee on sex offenders to pay for rape crisis programs.

Nick Castele was a senior reporter covering politics and government for Ideastream Public Media. He worked as a reporter for Ideastream from 2012-2022.