UH Portage Medical Center and the county prosecutor’s office have joined forces to launch the Portage County Domestic Violence Task Force, which held its inaugural meeting in January.
Almost 100 community organizations were represented, including first responders, UH Portage medical staff, shelter personnel and behavioral health experts. Attendees quickly realized that help and resources may already exist, but communication doesn’t.
“We have all these entities that care about domestic violence, that care about strangulation—the police departments, Townhall II, our shelter, us, but we’re all on a different page,” said Cassie Finnegan, director of the county prosecutor’s office victim/witness assistance division. “None of us ever got together and said, ‘Here’s what we do, here are the resources we have, and here’s how we can help each other.’ We were out on our own little islands.”
Finnegan said she and Jennifer Moreland, a forensic nurse and lead Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) for the Southeast Region of University Hospitals Medical Centers, created the task force when they realized that organizations with resources to help victims are present thoughout Portage County, but communication between those organizations didn’t.
Even with 22 years as an advocate for such crimes under her belt, Finnegan said she met people she’d never heard of at the meeting and learned about agencies and resources she didn’t know existed.
“That was really where our problem lay. This just kind of puts all of us together to work with each other and work off each other,” she said.
Job one is for Moreland to create a directory detailing who can provide what. That way, wherever victims turn, the organizations will be able to point them in the right direction. The information in the directory will change as the organizations and resources they provide evolve.
Moreland is not based at UH Portage, but receives a phone call when a SANE client arrives.
She is able to reach Finnegan 24/7 via cellphone.
“If she’s having a problem or there’s a victim there that’s alone, she can call me now, and I can come to the hospital and sit with a victim,” Finnegan said.
Once armed with resources, Finnegan said she will be able to do more than tell the victim what court will look like the following day. Perhaps the need is transportation from the hospital or a place to stay for the night. Perhaps food or clothing. Perhaps there are children to be cared for.
Finnegan does what she can. Since victims often lack a support system, and feel alone and scared, Finnegan provides a listening ear and practical solutions.
The Domestic Violence Task Force will meet every three months. Attendees will continue collaboration efforts, identifying barriers to care and the resources available to overcome them, Moreland said.
SANE
UH Portage launched SANE services, which provides victims of sexual, domestic and stranger violence with consults, exams and resources, in February 2023. Moreland said SANE dovetails perfectly with the task force.
“Our perspective here in the emergency room is a small piece,” she said. “They’ve got to walk out the door, where their struggle and their trauma and their work begins. So the more we have that we can provide for them, the better the outcome is going to be for them.”
At UH Portage, the work starts with medical intervention. A trained SANE nurse asks for case details and will be able to use the directory to better help victims take their next steps. It may be follow-up care. It may be help creating a safety plan. It may be basic resources people in more stable situations take for granted.
“These domestic violence victims, they’re walking away from their house with nothing, no vehicle, no finance,” Moreland said.
Each victim has the right to choose what resources she or he wants, and what next steps, if any, they will take. Unless patients agree to making a change, UH Portage staff have to let them return to potentially dangerous situations.
“It’s up to them what they would like to do, and from there, we do it. Sometimes they won’t do a full consult, an exam with us, but they’ll take resources from us,” Moreland said.
From February 2024 to February 2025, Moreland said SANE conducted over 80 sexual assault or domestic violence consults and exams at UH Portage. However, Finnegan said many domestic violence victims refuse to go to the ER.
Finnegan recalled an incident where a strangulation victim without external marks appeared for her appointment at the prosecutor’s office. Even though the woman said she was having trouble breathing and said her throat felt swollen and sore, she resisted the advocate’s encouragement to go to the ER.
“She talked her into it, and she went, and her airway was almost closed by the time she got to the ER. Had the advocate not told her, ‘Please go,’ God knows what would have happened. That’s how a lot of people die from strangulation. Their airway closes and they can’t breathe. We see that a lot. It’s internal,” Finnegan said.
Since strangulation is common in sexual assault and domestic violence cases, the task force has also created a Strangulation Subcommittee. As a strangulation expert, Moreland can provide the prosecutor’s office with documentation and can testify during court proceedings, Finnegan said.
Ohio law upgraded strangulation from a first-degree misdemeanor (unless the perpetrator had a prior record of violence against a family or household member) to a felony in April 2023, Finnegan said.
The reclassification increased the prosecutor’s work load and presented another challenge. Finnegan said lay people, including jury members, expect a victim who was strangled to the point where they couldn’t breathe or passed out to have bruising.
“That’s not true,” she said. “A lot of the injuries are internal, and she [Moreland] can explain that to juries. It’s not as easy as looking at somebody and saying, ‘Hey, they don’t look injured.’”
From October 2023 to September 2024, the county prosecutor’s office handled 613 new domestic violence cases. Finnegan said she expects to handle even more cases this year.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.