COLUMBUS, Ohio) – Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and former Attorneys General Richard Cordray, Nancy Rogers, Jim Petro, Betty Montgomery and Lee Fisher today urged the Ohio General Assembly to eliminate the state’s statute of limitations on rape.
In a letter to Senate President Larry Obhof (R-Medina) and Speaker of the House Larry Householder (R-Glenford), the six attorneys general supported Governor Mike DeWine’s recent comments and called on the legislature to amend Ohio Revised Code section 2901.13 (A)(2) to include rape alongside murder as crimes that can be prosecuted without a statute of limitations.
“We can’t let a rapist run out the clock on justice,” Yost said.
More than half the states have already eliminated the statute of limitations for rape. Ohio’s current statute of limitations for rape is 20 years.
“The profound invasion of the person makes rape like no other crime – a violation of the body, the mind and the soul. We now know that the trauma associated with a rape has a lifetime impact on a survivor, making it a different sort of offense than theft or dealing drugs or extortion,” the letter reads. “That trauma is often a barrier for a survivor to even report the crime. Societal pressures also operate to discourage contemporaneous reports. No one delays reporting a robbery.”
