When children in rural Hayward, Wisconsin, suffered abuse, the small community of 2,500 people was ready with an important resource: a child advocacy center with a team of experts prepared to guide them through the trauma.
For nearly eight years, the Marshfield Child Advocacy Center satellite clinic was the only place in a more than 100-mile radius where law enforcement officers, prosecutors, medical professionals, and child protective service workers joined forces to support the child’s wellbeing and pursue a criminal case against the abuser. An average of 50 children a year have spoken here to a trauma-informed, specially trained forensic interviewer, with law enforcement listening from another room. The interviews were recorded, and often played later in court, to minimize the amount of times the children had to repeat details of abuse.
These were critical services for kids who may have otherwise ended up answering questions in a police interrogation room, or not reporting at all. But in October, the Hayward satellite office was forced to close its doors.
It 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.
“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 final straw for the Hayward facility came this year, when it saw an 80 percent cut to its federal funding.
Rural areas like Hayward “have limited resources all around, but when it comes to be child abuse and neglect, there’s obviously a paucity of those,” said Kristen Iniguez, director of the Marshfield Child Advocacy Center, which oversaw the Hayward satellite clinic from its headquarters about 150 miles southeast. “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.”
Now, this is the reality facing abused children near Hayward. As I recently reported in a months-long investigation, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers have seen devastating cuts to their hotlines and legal advocacy services, among others, as a result of the declining VOCA funds.
Leaders of centers in five states told me the VOCA cuts are also forcing them to cut personnel or left them unable to fill vacant positions, leading to longer wait times for children in need of services and burnout for existing staff. And even for organizations that have managed to avoid the worst-case scenario—closing their doors—they are bracing for more funding cuts to come.
The funds mostly come from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases. But as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements—which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government—deposits into the Crime Victims Fund have shrunk from about $6.6 billion in 2017 to $2.5 billion this year. (Because of caps set by Congress since 2000 to manage fluctuations in the fund, the amount of money disbursed has been even lower.) The funds are distributed to states based on their population size, and then to eligible programs.
There have been efforts to shore up VOCA funds, but they’ve so far been inadequate. President Biden signed the VOCA Fix Act into law in 2021, diverting revenue from deferred and non-prosecution agreements to the Crime Victims Fund, but it has yet to fill the gap. The Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in both chambers of Congress this year, would divert additional funds collected through the False Claims Act, which penalizes defrauding of the government. Since fiscal year 2017, $1.7 billion from the False Claims Act has gone into the General Fund of the Treasury—money that could otherwise go into the Crime Victims Fund under the new bill. But the prospect of the bill becoming law before the end of this session looks increasingly unlikely.
More cuts without a solution enacted at the federal level means that future child abuse victims like those in rural northern Wisconsin will be less likely to see their cases prosecuted and to have a sense of closure, according to Iniguez.
“It’s kind of just unfair for the victim—and a child victim, at that,” she said.
While the House version of the bill introduced by Missouri Republican Rep. Ann Wagner now has nearly 200 bipartisan co-sponsors, it hasn’t yet gotten a needed committee hearing. Spokespeople for House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) didn’t respond to questions.
Wisconsin’s GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany, whose district includes both Hayward and Marshfield, has not signed on to support the bill. His office did not respond to requests for comment. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) supports the Senate bill and is waiting to be added as a co-sponsor, according to a spokesperson. Wisconsin’s Republican senator, Ron Johnson, has not signed on and did not respond to a request for comment. That bill, too, is still waiting for a committee hearing.
“My fear is that with the lack of funding, more and more CACs are going to be forced into making really difficult decisions about their ability to continue providing services, and to what degree in their communities—it’s a crisis.”
While politicians in DC dawdle, advocates fear the worst. Last year, VOCA funds supported more than 1,000 child abuse service organizations, according to DOJ data; support for victims of child sexual and physical abuse and neglect were among the most common services the funds supported, that data also shows. “Millions of victims, including abused children and battered women, will be left without access to safety, justice and healing,” more than 700 prosecutors wrote in a letter to Congress earlier this year, urging them to act. As Chris Newlin, the CEO of the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the first-ever child advocacy center, told me, “My fear is that with the lack of funding, more and more CACs are going to be forced into making really difficult decisions about their ability to continue providing services, and to what degree in their communities—it’s a crisis.”
The hallmark of child advocacy centers, experts say, is the multidisciplinary team—the collaboration among the group of officials who determine how to best support the child going forward.
The National Children’s Advocacy Center was established in 1985 with the help of former Democratic Rep. Bud Cramer, who saw firsthand how the system failed child abuse victims during his time as district attorney of Madison County, Alabama. In a 2013 column for Roll Call, Cramer wrote that he realized the system needed an overhaul when the grandmother of a child abuse victim told him the girl had to recount her allegations of abuse 11 different times during the course of his prosecution. “I had to ask myself, why aren’t we talking to each other—social workers, law enforcement, prosecutors and victims advocates? We all touched the case at some point, but had yet to coordinate any part of the investigation,” Cramer wrote. “So, I decided to change that.”
This approach has proven effective: Research has shown that child advocacy centers lead to higher rates of felony prosecutions of child sexual abuse, faster processing of cases, and greater satisfaction among both children and their caregivers.
The goal is always to ensure “that that child is always the first priority in that room, and that their needs for comfort and safety guide that process,” says Emily Perry, a forensic interviewer in Indiana. Susie’s Place—the child advocacy center she founded in 2009, which now has three locations throughout Indiana—is designed to feel like a cozy living room, outfitted with couches, toys, televisions, and books. In the interview room, kids sit in overstuffed armchairs with weighted blankets and an easel in between them and the forensic interviewer. (Drawing is among the techniques used to elicit information from kids.)
This sense of comfort is the point, and a personal priority for Perry, who has seen firsthand how victims struggle without the support offered by the centers. As a child protective service worker in the 1990s, Perry recalls walking a 5-year-old child sexual abuse survivor through the halls of a sheriff’s department—housed in the same building as the local jail—to a sterile detective’s interrogation room to be interviewed by someone without specialized training about their experience of abuse. “I knew that the trauma of the investigation,” she says, “was sometimes more harmful than the abuse itself.” Now, at centers like Susie’s Place, “we can gather reliable information to guide an investigation, but also springboard [children] into healing and recovery while that’s happening,” she adds.
The work of these professionals doesn’t end with the forensic interviews. They often also offer medical exams conducted by child abuse pediatricians, mental health counseling, and advocates, who explain the criminal justice process and help connect kids and families with other resources.
Perry said she hasn’t had to slash her facility’s services yet, as the state has done a good job minimizing the impact of the declining funds. But at some child advocacy centers, even additional state support hasn’t prevented casualties.
In West Virginia, federal VOCA funds have dropped 58 percent since 2017, even as the need is rising. Last year, more than 4,800 children in West Virginia received services from a child advocacy center for the first time—a 10 percent increase compared to the previous five years, according to the statewide child advocacy network. Maureen Runyon, coordinator of the child advocacy center at Charleston Area Medical Center Women and Children’s Hospital, lost one of her three VOCA-funded advocates last month and she is not planning to rehire due to the uncertain funding picture. Even though the West Virginia legislature allocated funds to offset the VOCA cuts over the last several years, there’s no guarantee they’ll do it again next year, when the state’s 21 child advocacy centers are expected to face a $2.5 million cut.
Runyon expects the impacts of losing an advocate will be felt by other staff who have to pick up the slack—and by the 450 children they serve on average each year, whose families will have to wait longer for the help an advocate offers. “At the end of the day, helping this child get what they need so they can grow up and be an emotionally healthy adult is the most important thing we do,” she said, “and our advocates are the ones who are primarily responsible for trying to make sure that happens.”
Only one of West Virginia’s federal lawmakers, Republican Rep. Carol Miller, has supported the bill. Neither of West Virginia’s senators—Republican Shelley Capito and outgoing Independent Joe Manchin—have signed on to the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act; nor has Republican Rep. Alexander Mooney. Their offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Cuts to federal funding for child advocacy centers in Alabama have “created a mass exodus” of specially trained staff from the state’s three dozen centers, said Lynn Scott, executive director of the Alabama Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers. And while the state has provided some funding to support the centers, it has not kept pace with the 57 percent drop in VOCA funds the state received since 2017, Scott says.
Since Scott joined the statewide group in 2019, half of Alabama’s executive directors have left their positions, mostly “due to the burnout and stress of having to do multiple roles because the funding for direct services has been cut.” Two centers have not rehired leaders, she said, and all centers have seen increases in wait times for forensic interviews and counseling sessions and even higher caseloads. Further cuts, Scott added, “would really close some doors”—likely at a half dozen or so centers in rural areas of the state, she believes.
Yet support for new funding from the state’s federal lawmakers has been mixed. Four of the state’s seven House representatives and GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville are supporting the bills. Alabama’s other Republican senator, Katie Britt, frequently advocates for “protecting kids,” including, famously, through misrepresenting an anecdote about a child sex-trafficking victim during the State of the Union rebuttal. But she has yet to sign on, and a spokesperson did not respond to repeated inquiries about why.
To advocates like Scott, the inaction is confounding. Fighting “child abuse is bipartisan,” she said. Increasing funding, she added, “should be an easy ‘yes.’”
When I asked advocates to share their message for lawmakers about the need to support these services, several emphasized that early intervention can reduce the likelihood that child abuse victims will face challenges later in life, including substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, and becoming perpetrators of violence themselves.
“We can’t keep children from being abused at a child advocacy center,” said Runyon from West Virginia, “but once they are, we’re their best chance for having good quality intervention, and having a healthier, happier adulthood.”
Even if the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act were to pass Congress this session, advocates say it would not solve the entirety of the funding crisis facing the centers: The funding mechanisms still rely on unpredictable criminal penalties. It would take some time before centers saw the increased funds. And the bill is only written to be valid through 2029. “This stabilization bill is just a band aid,” Perry, from Indiana, says. “If there isn’t more of a steady, consistent flow of funds into the Crime Victims Fund, then we’re just going to be revisiting this time and time again.”
Some state and local governments have tried to offset the federal funding cuts for their local centers, but many of those appropriations are temporary, and the facilities can’t plan for them to continue. There are a couple notable exceptions: One is Maryland, where officials passed a law last year compelling the state to supplement federal VOCA funds to ensure $60 million is available annually. Wendy Myers, executive director of the Maryland Children’s Alliance, which represents two dozen centers, said the new law helps “stabilize services for the most vulnerable Marylanders, including child victims of abuse,” and that the funds support training for forensic interviewers, trauma therapists, and language translation for direct services at all child advocacy centers across the state. Another exception is Colorado: The state passed a ballot measure last month that will provide tens of millions of dollars annually to 19 child advocacy centers and other VOCA-funded organizations through a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition.
Advocates say these kinds of long-term solutions are necessary to stabilize needed funding—but federal and state lawmakers largely continue to punt the issue. Biden’s budget recommended a $7.3 billion infusion into the Crime Victims Fund, but Congress has so far left it out of the relevant appropriations bill. As the National Children’s Alliance pointed out in its brief on VOCA cuts, private donors are unreliable, and relying on fundraising events leads to more overhead costs for nonprofits. “No other source offers the stability and scale that federal funding can provide for critical services for child crime victims,” the brief says of VOCA.
In the meantime, children are suffering without services, and centers in need are losing qualified staff. Iniguez, from the Marshfield CAC in Wisconsin, will leave the state to run a center in Ohio in the new year, she said. Ohio’s last federal award was almost double Wisconsin’s—and Iniguez hopes that means she won’t have to fight as hard to provide the services children need.
“The community I’m going to,” Iniguez said, “is very responsive to the needs of children who have been victimized.”