This past weekend, another story of sexual assault on a Virginia college campus hit news stands, but new funds hope to stem the tied, or at least help local police departments and victim support groups better tackle the problem.



This past weekend, another story of sexual assault on a Virginia college campus hit news stands, but new funds hope to stem the tied, or at least help local police departments and victim support groups better tackle the problem.

In early June, Gov. McAuliffe announced $74 million in criminal justice grants which will fund a wide range of agencies and programs that support the law enforcement system in Virginia.

“These are federal dollars that come to the state and then get distributed through the Department of Criminal Justice Services. So we were very very excited to announce them a significant increase from last year and some very very worthy programs were funded for this grant program,” said Brian Moran, Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, in an interview with RVAMag.

The Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) approves over 1000 grants annually, totaling more than $240 million. The grant money announced by Gov. McAuliffe this year for the DCJS supporting programs increased by $36 million since 2015. These grants were approved by the Criminal Justice Services Board on June 9th and administered by the Virginia Director of the DCJS, Fran Ecker.

The Board worked to try to verify that each grant recipient was responding to a critical and present local need so they could ensure that the federal funds are being spent wisely.

“Part of it is done by formula, and it is on the basis that we want there to be equal access to services for individuals not only in the greater Richmond area but across the state. So what we don’t want to do is have localities compete with one another for what we consider basic services,” said Ecker.

The Criminal Justice Services Board approved funding for a number of statewide DCJS-administered programs, including 26 grants totalling $2.2 million to the Byrne Justice Assistance Program that supports law enforcement and criminal justice system improvements, 112 grants amounting to $17.8 million to the Victim Witness Grant Program, which supports local programs designed to provide services and assistance to the victims and witnesses of crimes, and 58 Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence grants totalling over $21.5 million.

“We have a number of local community organizations that are working diligently to provide the appropriate services and sometimes all they lack are the necessary resources and these grants will provide those services so we’re thrilled,” Moran said.

The grant programs were chosen based on need and designated to support different regions in the state. Richmond received just shy of $4.3 million to aid local DCJS programs. The largest individual grant of about $1.1 million went to aid local “community corrections” services.

“The local community corrections programs provide supervision, they do drug testing, they also provide pre-trial services in some localities that would assist folks in not needing to stay in jail if their risk level is low enough,” said Ecker.

$1,619,464, or 38 percent of the total grant money designated to Richmond City went to support sexual assault and domestic violence programs including Safe Harbor, the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, and the YWCA. According to Ecker, the funding for these sexual assault and domestic violence grants comes from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim’s Fund, a national funding source for victim services that was established by Congress in 1988.

VOCA is comprised of criminal fines from national cases, forfeitures and other non-tax revenues collected by the federal government.

Due to fluctuations in the fund’s yearly deposits, Congress placed a cap on VOCA funds available for distribution in 2000 in an attempt to preserve the money for future services.

However advocacy and victim groups like the Action Alliance successfully lobbied Congress to lift the cap on the Victims of Crime Fund in 2015 after a number of record-breaking years. According to Ecker, the lifting of the VOCA funding cap is why there has been such a big increase in DCJS grant funds.

This year, Congress approved the release of $3.042 billion from the VOCA fund to be spent on victim services nation-wide.

“One of the priorities in that funding program that comes from to us from the feds is to provide services to unserved or underserved victims. Of the population of unserved and underserved victims, it includes elderly victims, victims that belong to minority groups, and specifically LGBTQ victims. So all of the programs that we’re funding under that service area that use VOGA funds are supposed to be prioritizing members of the underserved community, including the LGBTQ community,” Ecker said.

Safe Harbor is a sexual and domestic violence service provider in Richmond that offers shelter and counseling services to survivors. Their funding went from about $80,000 last year to over $400,000 due to the increase in available VOCA funds.

“This funding was transformational for our agency. It’s really allowing us to expand, to meet the needs of the survivors that we take care of,” said Cathy Easter, Executive Director of Safe Harbor. “We often run with a waitlist for clients who are waiting to come to us to get into counseling and we’re really going to be able to help reduce that wait list to get them in here sooner to start receiving survives.”

Safe Harbor was able to hire two new counselors, a volunteer coordinator, a court advocate, refurbish their offices, increase their counselor training budget, and give their entire staff a raise as a result of this increased funding.

“Our funding was so limited before we were really on a shoestring budget to meet the need and so all of our staff received a salary increase which I’m really proud that we were able to do that,” said Easter. “All in all we’ve really been able to ramp up staff and we’re going to be much more responsive to the needs of the community.”

The YWCA is one of the oldest and largest women’s groups in the country, and here in Richmond they provide services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault as well as child care programs.

“There is an uptick in numbers, there are survivors that need resources,” said Rupa Murthy, Chief Development Officer at YWCA Richmond. “And I believe that governor McAuliffe’s office and the administration have heard that and see that throughout the state and that’s why you’re seeing a larger number of dollars being funneled into support services for survivors.”

According to Murthy, increased awareness thanks to the efforts of sexual assault organizations like the YWCA have resulted in an increased number of reported sexual assault and domestic violence charges in recent years. According to the CDC, 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men reported being raped in 2012, though the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the majority, 64 percent, of rapes are not reported to the police.

“The conversation is shifting and the veil is literally coming off where in the past we haven’t been able to talk about domestic violence. There are huge stigmas attached to sexual assault as you know and the courage that it takes a survivor to come out and seek resources,” Murthy said.

YWCA Richmond has allocated their federal grant of $558,982 to their parental support, case management support, and house management programs which provide survivors with the resources and counseling that they need.

“It will strengthen all of our agencies to provide a better, quicker, more efficient and more relevant response to meet the needs of individuals who are experiencing intimate partner violence,” said Becky Lee, Chief Program Officer at YWCA Richmond. “Hopefully it will help us to make it so that we’re not quite so needed.”