Jill Riepenhoff
Investigative Producer
Jill is an experienced investigative journalist who spent more than three decades at The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. Jill investigated, among other things, naughty teachers, predatory mortgage brokers, slumlords, guardians who neglect and steal from mentally incompetent adults, and college campuses where rapes and other violent crimes are hidden. For kicks, she digs into sports and has written extensively about the dark side of youth, high school and college athletics. Her work has won dozens of state and national awards.
Bowling Green State University in Ohio agreed to a $2.9 million settlement with the family of Stone Foltz, who died in 2021 following an alcohol-fueled fraternity hazing event. The university vowed to unite with the Foltzes in their mission to eradicate hazing. The Foltzes sued Bowling Green, in part, for its failure to punish the bad actors on its campus in the years prior to Stone’s death. Their lawsuit listed dozens of examples in which allegations of hazing weren’t fully investigated by the university or cases in which fraternities and sororities were merely placed on probation for serious violations. It's a similar story at other campuses across the country.
Despite its best efforts to safeguard consumers from dangerous household items, a report from a non-profit consumer group found the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is hamstrung, in large part, by Congress.
More than two decades ago, the death of a toddler in a recalled portable crib prompted Congress to pass a new consumer protection law. Yet today, children still are dying in unsafe products, recalls remain largely ineffective at ridding homes of dangerous products, and the CPSC website that was supposed to help creates a false sense of security, an InvestigateTV analysis of federal records shows.
Hazing on college campuses claims lives and injures and humiliates countless others, yet government officials fail to enact strong laws to curb the persistent problem.
When a company learns a product it sells could be defective and dangerous, it has 24 hours to let the federal government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission know about it. But it could take months or years for the public to find out about the company’s possible concerns, if they even come to light at all. InvestigateTV has been battling CPSC and companies to disclose information about the products companies have sounded the alarm on – an alarm that remains relatively silent.
For many college coaches, it pays to get fired. Over a 17-year period beginning in 2005, public universities have shelled out more than $1.1 billion in buying out the contracts of college coaches, according to an InvestigateTV analysis of NCAA financial data collected by Syracuse University. Most of that money was spent on football coaches who play at the highest level of Division I athletics. As football coaches' annual compensation now stretches into seven digits, massive severance payments also grow bigger and bigger.
After the deaths of 13 children over the last 12 years, this summer, Fisher-Price and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned parents not to let their children sleep in certain rockers the company has made since the 1990s. Now, InvestigateTV has discovered that during a 2021 Congressional hearing, the company dodged questions about whether it currently had products on the market linked to children’s deaths.
Safe Sleep for Babies Act will save lives by removing two dangerous baby sleeping products from the U.S. market.
A new federal law takes effect in July that aims to clean up thoroughbred horseracing, which for years has been plagued by scandals, drugs and equine fatalities. Racing insiders have pushed for decades for such a measure and they welcome the new oversight.
Consumer advocates say the time is long past due to lift the cloak of secrecy at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The issue rests with a provision in the Consumer Product Safety Act, known as Section 6(b), which requires the agency to receive approval from manufacturers before releasing any information about a specific product.
It takes years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to remove dangerous products from the market because of its cumbersome rule-making process and ineffective recalls that don’t incentivize consumers to return or destroy dangerous items.
The federal agency created to watchdog consumer products - from crock pots to xylophones - is muzzled by its governing law, which gives all the power to manufacturers, including those with dangerous toys, appliances and other items on the market. The Fisher-Price Rock N Play – an inclined sleep product that defied the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for safe infant sleeping – exposed all that is wrong with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The lack of access to dental care plagues many parts of rural America.
