Giving undue space to Anthony Sowell, a Cleveland serial killer & rapist who died yesterday feels wrong. It is important, though, to lift up the women whose lives he stole, the women who survived his violence & the families & community still living with the fallout of his crimes.

The discovery of what this man did - what he was allowed to do - forced us to reckon with how little we valued the lives of Black women in our community.

The women he preyed upon were not believed by law enforcement, their disappearances were not a priority for news outlets. They were judged by their struggles, with drugs or mental health, and not as mothers, sisters, daughters and humans who deserved our help.

Experiences shared by survivors and family members spurred a deep examination of a broken system. It led to change that - while unfinished - is lasting. Police dispatchers respond to rape reports differently, loopholes that let DNA of felons go uncollected have been tightened.

And I hope that no family, ever again, will be denied or discouraged from reporting a loved one missing.

The survivors and families spurred series of stories spanning more than a decade that dissected the problems with how sexual violence was investigated in Cleveland.

With @LeilaAtassi (and support from editors) The Plain Dealer analyzed hundreds of sexual assault reports, pinpointing bias and inexcusably poor investigations that led to a loss of trust, few prosecutions and more opportunity for rapists to cause additional harm.

We discovered that rape kits collected in the case were not tested. You can draw a direct line from the Sowell case to Ohio's law that rape kits MUST be tested within 30 days, to more than 14,000 rape kits tested and the conviction of hundreds of rapists & many murders solved.

11 women lost their lives for that to happen. Survivors & family members carry the trauma with them still and today is probably especially hard. We owe them our energy, attention and determination to never again turn away.