The Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline and other programs that provide support to survivors of violence are being eliminated in response to federal and state cuts to victim services.

Officials with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office's Crime Victim Assistance Division said the decision to cut the hotline and funding to two other programs came after all other available options were explored.

Advocates, however, said state lawmakers should have known the elimination of such needed survivor resources would be the inevitable consequence of the Iowa Legislature's vote earlier this year to cut state funding to victim services by 26 percent.

“Part of the verbiage from the state legislators who voted for this cut was that it would not impact victim services in any way," said Adam Robinson, director of the Rape Victim’s Advocacy Program at the University of Iowa. "What we are seeing is how that is simply not reality."

The Crime Victim Assistance Board voted May 12 to save $268,239 by zeroing the state funding received by Transformative Healing, an organization focused on ending sexual violence in the LGBTQ community. The board also zeroed out the $217,996 received by IowaARCH, a multilanguage chat line for Iowans with questions about sexual violence.

Those programs, for which the state is the primary source of revenue, will receive no more state funding after June 30.

The board also voted to phase out the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline that RVAP has operated since 1999. The hotline, which is receiving $386,000 this year, will be funded $97,000 for the first quarter of next year — meaning it will have to cease operation by Oct. 1.

State officials said the service is being merged with the Iowa Domestic Violence Helpline, which will receive an additional $125,000 to $150,000 next year. The net savings will be about $140,000 for the first year.

Advocates say recent statistics show the separate hotline is needed now more than ever. Over the past two years, the hotline has experienced a 647 percent increase in call volume. For the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, the hotline is projected to receive nearly 4,000 calls this fiscal year alone. That averages to nearly 11 calls per day.

“There absolutely are a lot of overlap and parallels with gender-based violence, but the specific needs of someone who is experiencing domestic violence at a particular moment and someone who is experiencing sexual violence at a particular moment are just very different,” Robinson said. “The reality is that, when victim services are relegated into one service source, sexual assault survivors generally get underserved.”

State lawmakers

Advocates have targeted their frustration on the Iowa Legislature, which voted earlier this year to cut state funding to the victim service program from $6.7 million down to $5 million.

Legislators supportive of the legislation said at the time they believed federal funding would make up for any gaps caused by the state cuts. In 2015, the federal government boosted funds allocated to states through the Victims of Crime Act.

Shortly after that vote, however, the Crime Victim Assistance Division received word of millions of dollars in federal cuts. In the end, the division was faced with needing to trim $5.7 million from next year’s budget.

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Janelle Melohn, director of the division, said the decision to defund the programs came after the division already redirected available funds from other projects and shaved off $1.2 million more by eliminating any expenses that “wouldn’t affect staff or their ability to provide services to victims.”

In addition to the three defunded programs, other cuts include $75,000 to the Iowa Department of Public Health, $32,000 for the Van Buren County Attorney's Office, and $26,000 for the Iowa Victim Assistance Academy.

The division in the past has tried to use across-the-board cuts to spread the impact evenly among the organizations receiving public funding. But with so many cuts coming this year, the amount needed would be too large to apply indiscriminately.

Across-the-board cuts would have hit Iowa's nine remaining domestic violence shelters the hardest, eliminating at least 25 full-time employees.

“This would decimate their ability to serve in our current model and to fully reach their populations,” Melohn said.

Programs' future uncertain

The IowaARCH chat line has been offered since January 2016. Its parent organization, Monsoon, focuses on serving survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Iowa’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities, but IowaARCH is not a culturally specific program.

The program, instead, provides support and resources about gender-based violence for all Iowans, helping answer questions from survivors and their families and friends. The services are provided in the various major languages spoken in the state.

The anonymity of the internet allows people to ask their questions without having to identify themselves, said Mira Yusef, executive director of Monsoon. The staff and volunteers are trained to help connect callers with counselors or service providers.

It’s taken a while for word to get out about the 18-month-old program, Yusef said, but since January, IowaARCH has seen a 38 percent increase in use.

“We see this service as a must,” she said. “It’s just really starting its momentum, and we don’t want to lose that momentum.”

Plans right now are for the program to continue with trained volunteers after June 30.

Transforming Healing has offered a range of advocacy services since 2014 to survivors of sexual violence within the LGBTQ community. About 90 percent of the organization’s funding comes from the state.

"The only thing that we would have left would be prevention dollars, and we would need to stay alive as an organization in order to access that money," said Kimberly Andresen-Reed, the group's executive director.

Staff and volunteers already have organized fundraising efforts to keep Transformative Healing open and operating on July 1 and beyond.

“We will try our darnedest to continuing on, but it’s going to have to be a community effort,” she said.

Reporters Stephen Gruber-Miller and William Petroski contributed to this report.

Reach Jeff Charis-Carlson at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffCharis.