Child Advocacy Centers and Domestic Violence Shelters Are at Risk

While House Speaker Mike Johnson rushed to institute trans bathroom restrictions at the Capitol last month, the same swift action has not been extended to a looming crisis that could devastate services for abused children.

It’s very possible you’ve never heard of these organizations; I hadn’t until I first set out to report my latest investigation. But nearly 1,000 child advocacy centers across the country provide essential services to kids in the aftermath of physical or sexual abuse. These centers are critical to the criminal prosecutions of their abusers, as well as the long-term healing of abused kids and their families, providing resources such as access to trauma-informed professionals and things like clothing, housing, and ongoing mental health support.

But as I report for Mother Jones, these centers are in jeopardy. A vital federal funding source, the Crime Victims Fund (CVF), has been plummeting, leaving these centers stretched thinner and thinner.

(As of September, 2024, the CVF has $2.2 billion, but this balance has declined 90% since 2017. The CVF is funded by deposits from criminal fines, forfeited bail bonds, criminal penalties, special assessments and Congressional appropriations. Congress, through the Crime Victims Funds Stabilization Act, added funds to the CVF for FY 2023-24 amounting to $1.353 billion, but this was $630 billion less than FY 23, and no funding has yet been passed for FY 2024-25.)

Some facilities, including a center in rural northern Wisconsin, have already been forced to shut down because of this funding crisis. As a result, kids in that area who experience abuse may either wind up having to recount what happened to them in a sterile police interrogation room, or not at all.

“To have a law enforcement officer, for instance, or a social worker drive a patient three hours for a forensic interview—chances are, that's not going to happen,” the organization’s director, Kristen Iniguez, told me. “It's kind of just unfair for the victim—and a child victim, at that.”

If that’s not bad enough, it turns out the area’s local member of Congress, GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany, is not supporting a bipartisan bill that would help stabilize this funding source. (His office did not respond to my requests for comment.) As I reported earlier, the Crime Victims Fund is also a lifeline for domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers nationwide, which also face major threats in light of declining funds. But with this session of Congress rapidly nearing its end, it seems unlikely the bill will pass—meaning some of the most vulnerable among us, including abused children, may continue to struggle to get help in the new year.

FROM THE ORIGINAL MOTHER JONES ARTICLE.......

This CAC "was one of more than 960 child advocacy centers nationwide that have become essential for communities and law enforcement, and they rely heavily on public support to serve kids and families free of charge: Federal funds accounted for an average of 35 percent of centers’ budgets nationwide last year, according to the National Children’s Alliance.

"Much of that money comes from a fund created by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), which redirects financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases to domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child advocacy centers nationwide. But as prosecutions have declined, the government’s payout from that fund has been plummeting for years, throwing the already underresourced organizations that rely on them into disarray."