Advocates are bracing for a major funding cut to a critical source of support for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse in the US that will take effect later this year.
A total of 37%, or $700m, will be slashed from the national Crime Victims Fund, an essential lifeline for state and local services such as domestic violence hotlines and legal assistance for survivors, when the government’s next fiscal year begins in October.
“The consequences of not being able to access services are so dire. And we worry, of course, that it is deadly,” Monica McLaughlin, senior director of public policy at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said.
Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act (Voca) in 1984, which established the Crime Victims Fund. The latter collects fines and penalties from people and corporations convicted of federal crimes and distributes that funding to states, which in turn issue grants to state and local victim service agencies.
In 2018, deposits into the Crime Victims Fund were at a record high: $4.4bn. It will stand at only $1.2bn next year.
The crisis in Voca funding stems from seemingly arcane bureaucratic tweaks to government budgeting mechanisms that have inadvertently depleted the fund in recent years.
In 2017, the Department of Justice was increasingly settling federal cases without prosecution. Money from those settlements went into the general treasury instead of the Crime Victims Fund. Congress passed legislation in 2021 to redirect these funds into the Crime Victims Fund – but this legislative change has been too little, too late.
At the same time, Congress has been transferring funds from the Crime Victims Fund to programs established by the Violence Against Women Act.
“This is eliminating one debt by incurring another,” Deanna Dyer, policy director at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said.
While Voca funding has historically been hard to predict because of its reliance on case outcomes, these factors have led to feast-or-famine cycles: a healthy Crime Victims Fund one year can sour the next, and victim support programs are funded at the expense of one another. A tipping point is now approaching as the fund dwindles and federal grants are running out.
More than 6 million victims and survivors across the United States stand to lose essential services, including many domestic violence survivors who depend on Voca-funded services – at a time when domestic violence and reproductive coercion are on the rise and service providers are already struggling to respond to demand.
During a single 24-hour period in September 2023, survivors across the US made 13,335 domestic violence service requests that could not be met, according to a report by the National Network to End Domestic Violence. That’s a 41% increase in unmet service requests from 2021.
Service providers say they will be forced to lay off staff. Hopeful Horizons, for example, is a domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse service provider in South Carolina that provides supports including emergency shelter, transitional housing, and counseling. Voca funds 30 out 54 of its staff positions and a quarter of its budget.
“We already have a couple of staff who have resigned whose positions we are not filling. And then we’d be looking at potentially cutting six more full-time positions that are currently funded under Voca,” said Kristin Dubrowski, chief executive officer of Hopeful Horizons.
As a result, Dubrowski said, between 300 and 400 victims and survivors may no longer be served each year. Hopeful Horizons is the only victim service provider in the 3,200-sq-mile part of the Lowcountry, the region in which it operates.
She says that the cuts won’t only hurt survivors currently served. “This is a survivor-led workforce. A lot of the folks that work in domestic violence organizations are survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault themselves,” McLaughlin said.
Reduced Voca funds means fewer domestic violence hotlines, counseling services and legal services. The state-wide domestic violence hotline in Connecticut, Safe Connect, “is 100% Voca-funded”, Meghan Scanlon, chief executive officer of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence said. “If we don’t find another source of revenue, then it will shut down.”
States will have different experiences of the funding cuts, depending on how they historically managed the awards. Some administrators, like those in Louisiana, were quicker to issue grants when the coffers were flush. Others, like in Pennsylvania, insulated themselves from funding peaks and troughs through careful planning.
Louisiana consistently ranks in the top five states with the highest rate of domestic violence, but it has only 16 domestic violence non-profits. “You might have one organization that serves eight parishes across hundreds of square miles,” Mariah Wineski, executive director of Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said. To reach rural Lousianians, who comprise about a quarter of the general population, outreach offices have been set up to provide non-residential services, such as counseling and legal assistance.
Those outreach offices could be the first to go in Louisiana. Faith House, a domestic violence nonprofit that serves central and south Louisiana, depends on Voca as its second-largest funding source and expects to lose at least two of its nine outreach offices when the funding cuts hit. In an area with “extreme transportation issues”, these office closures mean some survivors will be left with no options, Lacome said.
But even in the most frugal states, “the health of the fund is at such a critical low point right now that even the most artful and conservative budget management … is not sufficient,” Deanna Dyer, policy director of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said.
Advocates are calling on state governments to fill the funding gap. Others want to see the fines and fees from non- and deferred-prosecution agreements retroactively recuperated into the Crime Victims Fund.
No option is off the table because, McLaughlin said, “when you cut over 30% of your belt off, you cannot tighten it”.
In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org
