Projects

VANISHED: An investigation into how police handle missing persons cases in Ohio

Columbus Dispatch journalists spent eight months investigating how law enforcement agencies search for missing persons and found that police often leave families in years of agonizing limbo while rarely using every tool at their disposal to bring missing Ohioans home. The investigation led to near-immediate action by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who started a working group on the topic, and a law was introduced in the Ohio legislature due to the investigation.

‘Who I always was’: A transgender woman’s journey to acceptance

King profiled Renee Mongeau, a transgender woman who came out at age 79 while living in an assisted living facility, and used her story to highlight what it’s like for older adults to come out and live authentically.

Legacy of displacement: The history of two iconic East Columbus apartment towers

Through the eyes of Diana Prysock, who has lived on the Near East Side of Columbus for decades, King told the story of the rise of the Latitude Five25 apartment towers, which displaced Prysock and dozens of others on Christmas Day 2022. Using Columbus Dispatch archives, Prysock’s story, historians and others, she created two articles about the history of the towers, a photo gallery and an interactive timeline. The story shows that the towers displaced 307 Black families from their homes in 1960 as the land was cleared for the public housing project, and then displaced more families in 2022. The towers were built as an urban renewal public housing project that used millions in federal and city funding, but problems have plagued them for nearly their entire history.

Lawmaker who was sexually abused wants to change Ohio child rape laws: What’s stopping reform?

While reaching out to lawmakers on a story about a priest sexual abuse survivor, King was witness to one Ohio representative’s teary admission: she, too, had been a victim of sexual abuse.

That was in July 2021.

After being the first person, much less reporter, that the lawmaker told of her own abuse, King went on to publish the story about the priest sexual abuse survivor. Then, she circled back to the representative.

This is her story of abuse, as it has never been told before.

King worked with her colleague, Haley BeMiller, and found not one, but two, state lawmakers who had suffered child sexual abuse and are fighting to change Ohio’s laws to help other survivors.

Chris Graham’s story Part 1: ‘There’s no escape’: Memories of being raped by Catholic priest haunt Columbus man

Part 2: ‘I’m going to change these laws’: Priest sex abuse survivor seeks legal reform in Ohio

It was hard for Chris Graham to put into words what it felt like to realize at age 38 that he’d suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted local priest as a child.

But, after spending several months with Graham and taking the time to learn not only about his experience, but the experience of other survivors of priest sexual abuse as well as state laws impacting survivors, King described the complicated, multifaceted topic to readers.

Using sensory details, she brought readers into the mind and memories of a priest sexual abuse survivor and used his story to lay the groundwork for telling a much larger story.

King explained to readers how priest sexual abuse survivors often don’t remember abuse
they suffered as children until it’s too late and statute of limitations have usually expired,
meaning there is no justice.

Telling this survivor’s story shed a light on how victims of childhood sexual abuse suffer
well into adulthood and beyond and informed the public about the uphill battle to seek justice, while also holding lawmakers in Ohio and nationwide accountable.

Catholic Secrecy: Investigating priest sexual abuse in Columbus

As soon as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus released a list of priests who had served in the diocese and who it said had been credibly accused of child sexual abuse, King set to work.

The diocese was one of hundreds of dioceses across the country to release such a list in the wake of a groundbreaking Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on priest sexual abuse released in September 2018. It was the last diocese in Ohio to release such a list. 

King spent weeks reporting on how the local diocese handled the list, subsequent task force and reports of abuse.

She provided readers with complete coverage of the list and priest sexual abuse in the Diocese of Columbus. King also worked with the Dispatch web team to create an online, searchable database with information she spent hours compiling in a local research library.

Instead of stopping after she did several investigative stories into the way the diocese handles sexual abuse allegations, she set out to offer readers information the diocese, with the files at their fingertips, wouldn’t: details of where each accused priest had served within the diocese, photos of the accused and more information regarding the allegations against them.