State Slashes Sexual Assault Service Funding

Sexual assault victims in Wisconsin will have fewer support services due to a 42.5 percent cut in the state’s Sexual Assault Victim Services grants, the only state grant program serving victims of sexual assault.

The Door County Sexual Assault Center must cut as much as $18,000 from its budget by Dec. 13 after the directors of centers across the state were instructed to revise their 2012 budgets last week.

Karrie Anthony, coordinator of the Door County Sexual Assault Center, said she will have to cut about 15 hours per week of face-to-face time with sexual assault victims. She works with 60 to 100 different victims every year.

Sue Lockwood, executive director of the sexual assault centers for Door, Marinette, Brown and Oconto counties, said about half of the organization’s clients are children.

Services provided by the centers, including victim advocacy, medical advocacy, and support as cases move through the court system, help to prevent long-term problems and lock up criminals, Lockwood said.

The grants are funded through the Crime Victim and Witness Surcharge (CVWS), which is paid by perpetrators when they are convicted of a crime. The funds are dispersed through the Office of Crime Victim Services within the Department of Justice. That fund reached $1.76 million in 2008, but dipped to $1.39 million in 2011. Lockwood said it has not been determined why the fund has dwindled so quickly.

The centers’ directors were instructed this fall to cut 2012 budgets by 10 percent under the new state budget, but this fall they were told they needed to cut another 5.2 percent. Lockwood said she met that by cutting training and mileage budgets, but last week directors were informed that they would have to re-work their budgets again with much more drastic cuts by Dec. 13 because of the decrease in funds available through the CVWS fund.

Ian Henderson, director of legal and systems services for the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said the Wisconsin Department of Administration identified the Sexual Assault Centers for cuts.

As a result, the budget for the four centers Lockwood oversees has dipped from $140,000 to $80,000.

“They have not been forthcoming about why we were chosen for further cuts,” Henderson said. “But this is an example of why funding this program through surcharges is not a stable way to fund this program. We need a long-term commitment from the state.”

Lockwood said cuts to services like those of the sexual assault centers are short-sighted.

“I’ve been working to make people in Madison aware that less prevention equals more sexual assault,” Lockwood said. “If we don’t support victims as they go through the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Exam), the court system, and the aftermath, then fewer of them will stick with it, and more perpetrators will not be held accountable.”

Lockwood is pursuing donations from companies and individuals to make up the shortfall.