A survivor of domestic violence is speaking out about what she calls the lack of accountability for how public anti-violence money is allocated. In her own case, she says no public funding was available to help her when she needed it.
Alexis A. Moore, founder of Survivors in Action in Oakland, Calif., is trying to follow the federal money for preventing domestic violence.
Moore, a 30-year-old law school student in Sacramento, Calif., began to wonder where the money was going after she found herself personally needing it, but not getting it.
Roughly four years ago, Moore had been living with an abusive man who threatened her and her relatives, saying he would come after them if she ever tried to leave.
In planning her escape, she had been counting on a local shelter to house–and hide–her. “I was turned away from the then-El Dorado County Women’s Center, only to learn later they had enough funding to serve me at my most dire time of need,” Moore recently told Women’s eNews.
Kelly Plag, director of community affairs with the Center for Violence-Free Relationships–formerly the El Dorado County Women’s Center–said the center’s funding is a matter of open record.
“We have specific grant requirements and we report to our grantors,” Plag said. She added that they “have all the numbers.”
However, these numbers are not available on their Web site and grantees are not required by law to post their budgets or audit results publicly.
Funding for Direct Assistance
Since the enactment of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, the federal government has channeled over a billion dollars into organizations that are required to provide assistance to victims of domestic violence. The VAWA Web site does post figures on grants awarded to specific organizations and the amount of each grant, but does not detail how the funds are expected to be spent.
This year’s grants from the Recovery Act funds, including STOP (Services, Training, Officers, Prosecutors), Violence Against Women Formula Grant Program and the Transitional Housing Awards, are listed and broken down by recipient organization. In Recovery Act funding, totaling $134 million, STOP, which funds the training of members of law enforcement, received $60 million; organizations in California and New York received $4,659,839 million for transitional housing; and funding for State Coalitions totaled $6,250,000.
Federal law requires each organization receiving government funding to complete a semi-annual progress report that includes the numbers of grant-funded staff, people trained and victims served. The numbers of those seeking services who were not served, demographic data on clients and services provided are also required.
The Muskie School of Public Service, at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, receives all VAWA required reports and disseminates them in the form of data reports and narrative summaries to Congress.
However, the reports do not link individual organizations with any specific figures. Instead, they provide overall figures per grant program, such as grants for reducing violent crimes on campuses or grants for education and technical assistance.
These VAWA reports are available online at the VAWA Measuring Effectiveness Initiative, which is run by the Muskie School. However, there is no documentation on a per-organization basis.
The key difference between the reporting called for by Moore and existing VAWA reporting requirements is organization-specific information. Moore also wants more public access to this kind of information, which is not required by VAWA.
Reporting requirements are not for the Muskie School to determine. It operates under a mandate by Congress. So it would take a signal from Congress for the school to start breaking down its reports into more specific performance audits and for grantees to publicly post this information on Web sites, where donors and clients alike could easily check it.
Survivors Share Similar Stories
Other survivors of abuse–Randi Rosen and Claudia Valenciana, two of the thousands of women involved with Survivors in Action–shared similar experiences with Women’s eNews.
Both women report reaching out to the Coalition to End Family Violence in Oxnard, Calif. Rosen says her calls were not returned and Valenciana says she was denied assistance.
The Oxnard group’s executive director, Laura Gonzales, told Women’s that she was surprised by the stories and didn’t understand how they happened. Gonzales said the group undergoes regular audits and reports to the VAWA Measuring Effectiveness Initiative on all government funding.
Gary Cunningham, Executive Director of Victim Protection in Colorado quotes, “these coalitions do nothing but get the big grants and do nothing for the victims, CCADV I was told is not for victims, they provide memberships and projects for education and training only, so much for that working for the victims, just another screw job for the victims and the government pays them for it, this director couldn’t even tell me what VPI did or why we should be a member of the organization again, but it was all my fault for whining too much, what a great deal, I think we should start a coalition and get al the money we need and do nothing like they do, so far NCADV and CCADV is nothing but a joke and an expensive one at that. VPI may not be able to maintain helping victims, if these coalitions keep getting the funding for training, the training isn’t working, victims are dying.”
After President Barack Obama appointed Lynn Rosenthal to the newly created post of White House Advisor on Violence Against Women in June, Moore launched a petitioning effort that begins with an open letter to Rosenthal about the need to track public anti-violence funds.
The petition, on the Survivors in Action Web site, calls for auditing government grants. It also pushes for the creation of a federal committee to oversee government-funded groups and provide victims a public clearing house to document their experiences and file complaints.
The petition has close to 9000 signatures. Moore says that once she gathers 10,000 she plans to take the petition to Congress and begin a lobbying campaign for changes in the VAWA reporting mandate, as well as the creation of a national clearing house.
Services Denied By Some
The Survivors in Action Web site provides a list of organizations that have denied services to victims, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
At the Hotline, which receives 65 percent of its funding through federal grants, Retha Fielding, chief communications officer, said the group complies with rigorous auditing requirements.
“We just don’t always have enough people to answer the phones,” Fielding said, adding that the group received 255,047 calls in 2008 and was able to answer 212,216. In other words, 42,831 calls went unanswered.
Moore says her idea for a national clearing house for victims to report their experiences could help organizations, such as the national hotline, quantify the extent to which they can’t keep up with service demand.
If organizations are unable to serve victims due to a lack of funding, keeping a public record of these cases could lead to more funding to meet the needs of victims, Moore says.
In cases where victims are unjustifiably denied services, the clearing house would provide donors and grant-makers–including the federal government–the ability to measure the effectiveness of service providers and base their funding decisions on actual experiences.
At a time when domestic violence funding across the board is being slashed under budget pressures, Moore admits her Web site might be consider ill-timed by service providers who are feeling hard-pressed.
“It’s not easy speaking out,” said Moore. “But I’m not here to make friends; I’m here to make sure no victim is ever left behind.”
Toyota’s problems don’t seem to stop. The ongoing controversy over the cause of the unintended acceleration in several of the automaker’s vehicles continues with Toyota announcing that it will fix gas pedals in about 4 million vehicles. The repair is being billed as a solution to the problem of unintended and uncontrolled acceleration in several Toyota vehicles, including the Camry.
The announcement comes just three weeks after the company announced that it would recall 3.5 million vehicles because of defective floor mats that, it then said, were responsible for the unintended acceleration. The floor mats, according to the automaker, could get stuck on the accelerator and cause it to jam. However, since that recall announcement, the automaker has faced strong pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has asked the automaker to do more to identify the problem and find solutions.
California product liability lawyers have been no strangers to the uncontrolled acceleration issue. However, the problem only gained nationwide notoriety after an accident in San Diego in August this year, in which four people were killed. 911 tapes show that the driver of the car, an off duty California Highway Patrol officer, tried desperately to stop the vehicle as it accelerated to uncontrollable speeds and crashed.
Soon after the accident which shocked Americans, Toyota announced a recall of the vehicles because of floor mat issues. The company likely hoped the matter would end there, but federal regulators have not been so willing to declare an end to the matter. On the 2nd of November, the company said it would recall floor mats which could possibly jam the pedal. Toyota also hastily announced that the NHTSA had found no other defect that could contribute to uncontrolled acceleration. It was swiftly rebuked by the agency, which said Toyota needed to do more to deal with the problem.
Now, Toyota has announced that it will fix these vehicles. The repairs will involve shortening the gas pedals by ¾ inch in some vehicles. Repairs will also involve removing the floor padding to prevent the gas pedals from getting stuck on the mats. The repairs will begin in January. Several popular Toyota models are included. These include the Camry and Tundra from 2007 to 2010, Avalon sedans and Tacoma pickups between 2005 and 2010, Prius hybrid from 2004 to 2009, Lexus ES-350 from 2007 to 2010, IS-250 and IS-350 from 2006 to 2010.
Many safety experts believe the unintended acceleration incidents could be to Toyota what the rollover crashes were to Ford. That automaker suffered a severely tarnished reputation after defective Firestone tires on hundreds of its Explorer SUV’s burst, causing the vehicles to roll over. Several motorists and occupants were killed, and hundreds were seriously injured in these crashes. Toyota in contrast, has had a solid and reliable reputation, and is currently the largest automaker in the country. The unintended acceleration scandal, however, will be hard for the automaker to be brush off.
The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of recalled products. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.
The Reeves Law Group is not acting as legal counsel for any party in the matters discussed in this posting.
A Park Forest, IL, woman died last Sunday when she was hit by a vehicle near the corner of 209th St. and Western Avenue in Chicago Heights, IL. The accident claimed the life of Ruby Matthews of the 128 Ash St. in Park Forest, IL. According to an Olympia Fields Police Department spokesperson, Matthews was involved in a minor car accident with a Chevrolet Cavalier while she was driving a Chevrolet Trailblazer in the southbound lanes of Western Avenue. Matthews and the unidentified teenage driver of the other vehicle were examining the damage to the two cars in the northbound lanes of Western Ave. when they were hit by another car. The teenage driver suffered a broken leg as a result of the collision.
Matthews was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, IL, where she was pronounced dead around 10 p.m. The South Suburban Major Accident Reconstruction Team is still investigating the fatal accident. Charges have not yet been filed in the matter.
The family of the deceased car accident victim may have a wrongful death claim against the driver that caused her death. If you or someone you know has been injured or killed in a Chicago car accident and would like to speak to an Illinois attorney, please click here.
