High Impact Local Reporting

Rachel Dissell was a reporter for The Plain Dealer from 2002 until 2020. Her investigative pieces have changed laws, policies, hearts and minds.

Reinvestigating Rape, a series with reporter Leila Atassi, led to the testing of nearly 14,000 rape kits and investigations that resulted in indictments in nearly 800 cold cases in Cleveland. Researchers built on the project’s early discoveries to redefine the understanding of serial rape in Ohio and beyond. Toxic Neglect, a series with colleague Brie Zeltner, exposed Cleveland’s poor track record for investigating when children were lead poisoned. The series sparked a communitywide effort to proactively protect children from the toxin, including a grassroots citizen petition drive and the formation of a coalition of more than 300 public, private and philanthropic partners who worked to pass a law that requires all rental homes in the city to be inspected for lead hazards.

In 2019, Case Closed, a series with Andrea Simakis, explored the systemic failures of Cleveland police through the experience of a woman who had to solve her own rape. Dissell was a 2016 Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma Ochberg Fellow and has received training in the neurobiology of trauma and trauma-informed interviewing and storytelling techniques and ethics. Her series, Johanna: Facing Forward, won the 2008 Dart Award, and her story, Case Closed, won the 2020 Dart Award.

Dissell also has trained law enforcement, nurses and advocates and community groups for End Violence Against Women International and the National Center for Victims of Crime. She also has taught emerging journalists at her alma mater, Kent State University.

Arnessa Garrett has worked at newspapers for more than 20 years, beginning at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, where she started as a reporting intern for the Metro section.  She has focused on issues of criminal justice, violence and trauma throughout her career.

Before coming to The Dallas Morning News, Garrett worked for The Daily Advertiser, her hometown newspaper in Lafayette, Louisiana. As assistant Metro editor there, she edited a special report on domestic violence that won the newspaper the 2006 Dart Award. She was then tapped to help shape the paper's new stand-alone business section and later became its senior editor for news. Before coming to The Daily Advertiser, Garrett spents seven years on the copy desk of The Boston Globe.

Rob Perez is an investigative reporter for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. He has won numerous state, regional and national honors, including the National Headliner and Best of the West awards as well as the 2009 Dart Award for the series “Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawai’i Homes.” He is a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for business reporting.

Perez began his journalism career more than 30 years ago in Guam, where he's from. He has also worked for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Orange County Register, Sun of San Bernardino County and Florida Today. He is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego.

Rita Henley Jensen is founder and editor in chief of Women's eNews and founder of its sister site, Arabic Women’s eNews. Jensen is a survivor of domestic violence and a former welfare mother who earned degrees from Ohio State University and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

A former senior writer for the National Law Journal and columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, Jensen has more than 30 years of experience in journalism and many awards, including the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni Award, the Hunter College Presidential Grant for Innovative Uses of Technology in Teaching, the Alicia Patterson fellowship, and the Lloyd P. Burns Memorial Award for Public Service.