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FCASV Newsletter • Winter 2006
Violence
Against Women Act Reauthorized
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 Thanks
in large part to the grassroots effort of rape crisis
centers and domestic violence programs, Congress passed
the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA) in mid-December, and on January 5, 2006, President
Bush signed VAWA into law. VAWA 2005 includes many provisions
to address sexual assault. New funding streams are included
to support direct services, prevent sexual violence, serve
teens and youth, and provide housing opportunities for
victims. Note that while VAWA authorizes grant programs
at certain spending levels, appropriations battles lie
ahead of us to ensure that funding is provided for these
programs.
Sexual Assault Services
Program (SASA)
The Sexual Assault Services Program (SASA) will create
a desperately-needed funding stream for direct services
for sexual assault victims, as well as provide resources
for state sexual assault coalitions. Under this new
program, funding will be distributed by the Department
of Justice to states and their sexual violence coalitions.
The formula grant funds will assist States and Tribes
in their efforts to provide services to adult and minor
sexual assault victims and their family and household
members. In addition, a discretionary grant program
for non-profit organizations serving Communities of
Color is established. Grants can be used for general
intervention and advocacy, including accompaniment through
medical, criminal justice, and social support systems,
support services, and related assistance. SASA funds
can also be used to provide training and technical assistance
relating to sexual assault for various organizations,
including governments, law enforcement agencies, courts,
nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations,
and professionals working in legal services, social
services, and health care. Funding level:
$50 million for each of fiscal years 2007-2011.
Rural Domestic Violence,
Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, Stalking and Child
Abuse Enforcement
VAWA 2005 will expand the Rural Domestic Violence and
Child Abuse Enforcement Assistance Program to address
the needs of rural victims of sexual assault, stalking
and dating violence.
Funding level: $55 million for each
of fiscal years 2007-2011.
Distribution: Not less than 25% for
services to meaningfully address sexual assault in rural
communities.
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This project
was supported by Grant Number 2004-WF-AX-0003 awarded
by the Violence Against Women Grants Office, Office
of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points
of view in this document are those of the author and
do not necessarily represent the official position or
policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or the Florida
Department of Children and Families. |
Rape
Prevention and Education
VAWA 2005 reauthorizes the Rape Prevention and Education
Grant Program with no substantive changes to the purpose
area language. VAWA 2005 allots a minimum of $1,500,000
of the total funds made available in each fiscal year
for RPE to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
Funding level: $80 million for each
of fiscal years 2007-2011.
Grants to Reduce Violence Against Women on
Campus
VAWA 2005 reauthorizes this program and increases the
authorization to $15 million for each fiscal year 2007
through 2010. The funding is available for institutions
of higher education to create collaborative groups to
develop and strengthen effective security and investigation
strategies to combat sexual assault, dating violence,
domestic violence, and stalking; to develop and strengthen
victim services; and to ensure access to justice for
victims. It sets parameters for training of campus law
enforcement and campus
judicial boards. VAWA 2005 also provides funds for technical
assistance on Cleary Act reporting.
Funding level: $12 million for fiscal
year 2007; $15 million for fiscal years 2008-2011
Legal Assistance for Victims
VAWA 2005 will expand the civil legal assistance grants
to allow LAV-funded project attorneys to represent victims
in criminal matters to protect their
civil rights. It allows for representation of adult
and minor victims of domestic violence, dating violence,
sexual assault, and stalking in matters that impact
the victim's safety, privacy or rights, including: family,
Tribal, Territorial, immigration, employment, economic
justice, administrative agency, housing, campus administrative,
or protection or stay away order proceedings, and other
similar matters, and criminal justice investigations,
prosecutions, and post-trial matters.
Funding level: $65 million for each
of fiscal years 2007-2011. Not less than 25 percent
of appropriated funds shall be used to support projects
focused solely or primarily on providing legal assistance
to victims of sexual assault. |
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Funding
Successes in Congress
Virtually
every federal funding source for sexual assault services
was at serious risk during the past year. Through the
efforts of grassroots advocates and activists and an
expanded national lobbying presence, all of these funding
sources have been preserved or expanded:
- The VOCA fund
balance was preserved for services to victims of crime.
- Rape-set aside
funds that are part of the Preventative Health and
Health Services Block Grant (PHHSBG), slated for the
chopping block, were spared.
- VAWA was reauthorized including
the Rape Prevention and Education Program (RPE) with
new and expanded programs for sexual assault victims.
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Forensic Examination Payments Fix
VAWA 2005 will clarify that in order for state and tribal
governments to use STOP grant funds to pay for forensic medical
exams for sexual assault victims, victims shall
not be required to seek reimbursement from their insurance
company. It also ensures that the victim must not be required
to participate in the criminal justice system or cooperate
with law enforcement in order to be provided with a forensic
medical exam or reimbursement for such exam.
Grants to Encourage Arrest
– Protection Order Improvements
VAWA 2005 amends current law so that no later than 3 years
after the date of the enactment of the Act, no law enforcement
officer, prosecuting officer or other government official
can ask or require an adult, youth or child victim of sexual
assault to submit to a polygraph examination or other truth
telling device as a condition for proceeding with the investigation
of the crime. In addition, the refusal of a victim to submit
to such an examination will not prevent the investigation
of the crime.
Confidentiality and privacy
protections
VAWA 2005 will amend grant programs to require grantees and
subgrantees to protect the confidentiality and privacy of
adult and minor victims of domestic violence, dating violence,
sexual assault, or stalking and their families who are receiving
or have received services at their programs.
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Strengthen
Your Community by Joining the Discussion about Sex Offenders
As a result of high profile cases
such as the murder of Jessica Lunsford, sex offenders have
been a major topic of conversation, legislation and local
ordinances across Florida. Rape crisis centers, victim advocates
and activists should be at the center of the discussion about
sex offenders and preventing sexual violence but are often
not included. Don’t wait for an invitation! Use these
tips and your own expertise and become a leader in your community’s
discussion about sex offenders.
Educate Yourself
Before you can become a leader on this topic, you
must educate yourself. Excellent information about sex offender
management and the prevention of sexual abuse is available
on the web. There is a strong research base for what works
and doesn’t work with sex offenders. Here are some important
sites for you to check out:
Stop It Now! (www.stopitnow.com)
is a national organization with an excellent approach to the
work of ending child sexual abuse. On their website, under
the “warning signs” tab, you can find the following
articles and much more:
• Behavioral Warning Signs a Child May Have Been Abused
• Physical Warning Signs a Child May Have Been Abused
• Healthy Sexuality in Children
• What to Watch Out for When Adults are with Children
• Alert Signals for an Adult with Sexual Behavior Problems
The Center for Sex Offender
Management (CSOM) (www.csom.org) is a national organization
with tremendous expertise in this area. On their website,
under the CSOM documents tab, you can find the following articles
and much more:
• Community Notification and Education
• Sex Offender Registration: Policy Overview and Comprehensive
Practices
• Community Supervision of the Sex Offender: An Overview
of Current and Promising Practices
• Myths and Facts About Sex Offenders
FCASV has collaborated with the
Florida Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers
(FATSA) on legislative issues concerning sex offenders.
They are the state expert in this arena. Check out their position
statement on their website at www.floridaatsa.com.
Educate Your Community
When you have familiarized yourself with the key
issues around sex offender management and sexual abuse prevention,
consider helping to educate your community around these issues.
Whether you decide to host a community forum on sex offender
issues or make addressing sex offender issues part of your
long-term commitment to ending sexual violence in your community,
here are some important things to consider.
Be ready to listen.
These issues are fraught with painful emotion for
people. In order to be able to consider rational responses,
people must first be heard. Remember that many parents are
very frightened and many survivors continue to experience
a lot of pain when addressing sexual violence issues. If you
host a community forum, consider getting people in dyads to
exchange a few minutes each to vent their feelings before
starting to look for solutions.
Help your community separate
the myths from the facts.
You don’t necessarily have to share your opinion
about the best approaches to this problem (although it’s
good to know where you stand), but you do need to be able
to help people separate myths, or fears, from facts. The websites
listed above should help you do this.
Perhaps the most important fact
to help your community understand is that the majority of
offenders know their victims. Although the horrific cases
of abduction by strangers rightly garner the public’s
attention, children are far more at risk from adults and adolescents
they know.
Another important fact is that
not all sex offenders are the same. Sex offenders differ greatly
in terms of how violent their offenses are, who they target,
whether or not they are good candidates for treatment, etc.
Approaches that are “one size fits all” simply
won’t adequately address the problem.
Build partnerships.
Whether or not you decide to lead or participate
in a community dialogue about sex offenders, it’s important
that you make a commitment to dealing with issues related
to sex offenders. Consider partnering with sex offender treatment
providers in your region and learn more about best practices
in treating sex offenders.
Understand common positions that
communities and individuals take regarding the management
of sex offenders and the arguments for and against these positions
(see “Current Debates” article).
Event Idea: Show
the movie “The Woodsman” in which Kevin Bacon
plays a sex offender. Use the discussion guide from the Stop
It Now! website (www.stopitnow.com) to discuss the movie.
Current
Debates Regarding Sex Offender Management
Below are some of the common statements
currently being made about sex offender management in Florida
with arguments for and against these positions.
Research-based treatment
of sexual offenders by qualified practitioners is an important
tool in preventing sexual violence.
Argument for: Most convicted
sex offenders will be living back in the community at some
point. Offenders living in the community who have received
appropriate treatment are less likely to re-offend. While
treatment by providers without expertise in the area of sexual
offending will not help prevent sexual violence, appropriate
treatment helps many offenders control sexual offending behavior.
Sexual offenders who leave prison or probation without receiving
treatment are more likely to re-offend. Good treatment includes
the use of research-based risk assessment tools and polygraphy.
Rather than “coddle” sex offenders, research based
sex offender treatment focuses on improving community safety.
Argument against: Money
should be spent on victims and not offenders. As long as victims
aren’t receiving enough services, no money should go
toward offenders. Sex offenders can’t be cured and shouldn’t
be coddled. The only way to deal with sex offenders is to
lock them away.
Local ordinances further
restricting the residences of sex offenders are needed to
improve community safety and prevent sexual violence.
Argument for: If sex offenders
are kept out of a particular city or areas of the city, the
residents of that city will be less likely to have contact
with sex offenders and will therefore be less likely to be
victimized. Furthermore, we must send a strong message to
sex offenders that they are not wanted and their crimes abhorrent.
Sex offenders should and must be dealt with harshly in response
to their crimes.
Argument against: Neighborhoods
already dealing with significant stress (e.g. where large
numbers of working poor families live) that lack resources
to resist are forced to accommodate a disproportionate number
of sex offenders. If offenders are unable to find housing,
they are unlikely to remain “manageable” by our
system of sex offender management. Also, offenders without
a stable housing situation will be under greater stress and
therefore more likely to perpetrate new sex offenses.
Tools such as GPS tracking
and internet registries are our best hope for preventing future
sex offenses.
Argument for: The public
has the right to know who the sex offenders are in their community
so that they can empower themselves and keep their families
safe. The privacy of sex offenders cannot, and should not,
be protected.
Argument against: These
tools focus only on convicted sex offenders while research
shows that the vast majority of offenders have not been caught.
For this reason, they may give communities a false sense of
safety (i.e. “Law enforcement knows where the sex offenders
are in my community”). Prevention strategies must focus
more broadly on community education and prevention education
for young people. Educational strategies should go beyond
“stranger danger” approaches to look deeply at
the issues of sexual violence in the community. All offenders
are not the same. Unless tracking strategies target the most
dangerous offenders, public funding should not be directed
to expensive technology in lieu of more in-depth strategies
such as specialized probation and treatment. Additionally,
in most cases, the sexual offender knows his or her victim.
These tools do little to prevent intrafamilial sexual violence.
In cases where the offender is a family member, registries
pose real privacy concerns for victims.
Long, mandatory minimum
sentences for sex offenders will help communities be safer.
Argument for: Sex offenders
who are locked away for a long time can’t commit crimes.
Long sentences send the message that sex offenses will not
be tolerated.
Argument against: Long
mandatory minimum sentences for sex offenses sometimes result
in prosecutors deciding not to file charges or filing charges
on a lesser offense. In these cases, mandatory minimums actually
mean fewer sex offenders are being prosecuted. This is why
the death penalty was eliminated as a punishment for capital
sexual battery in the state of Florida.
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Florida’s
Sexual Assault Interagency Councils Project Gains National
Attention
FCASV has earned national recognition
for its work to help communities coordinate their response
to sexual violence through developing sexual assault
interagency councils (SAIC’s). In September 2005,
FCASV training coordinator Grace Frances and Gretchen
Howard, program manager for Project Payback, 8th Judicial
Circuit State Attorney’s Office, presented on
Florida’s SAIC work at the STOP Grant
Administrators National Meeting in Chicago,
IL. The two made a case to the national group of grant
administrators for funding community efforts to form
SAIC’s to bring prosecutors, medical professionals,
victim advocates and law enforcement officers together.
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The purpose of an SAIC is to enhance
community collaboration around sexual violence and develop
a system-wide protocol for responding to rape victims. Each
year the STOP Violence Against Women Formula Grants provide
millions of dollars to the public and non-profit sectors to
end sexual and domestic violence.
Additionally, the National Sexual
Violence Resource Center has expressed interest in using several
of FCASV’s SAIC materials in its upcoming national Sexual
Assault Response Team Toolkit manual.
In its Sexual Assault Awareness
Month planning kits, FCASV includes how-to information on
creating SAIC’s and encourages rape crisis centers to
make use of April’s theme “Strengthening Communities,
Ending Sexual Violence” to get the ball rolling on system
collaboration. Contact Grace Frances at gfrances@fcasv.org
or 888-956-7273 for information or technical assistance on
SAIC’s.
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