The Oregon Department of Justice announced Friday that Sexual Assault Support Services of Lane County (SASS), along with four similar nonprofit organizations in five other Oregon counties, will share a total of $239,865 in federal grant money to help bolster supportive and preventative services to assist victims of sexual assault.
SASS will individually receive $60,000 worth of the grant money appropriated by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Sexual Assault Services Program (SASP), a non-profit funding source created under the Violence Against Women Act of 2005 (VAWA) and administered by the Office on Violence Against Women.
According to the department, SASP is “the first funding stream solely dedicated to the provision of direct intervention and related assistance for victims of sexual assault.” The program places a particular emphasis on “intervention, advocacy, accompaniment, support services, and related assistance for adult, youth, and child victims of sexual assault,” and also provides facilitation to family and household members of victims and those collaterally affected by sexual assault.
Passing the 2005 VAWA allowed the U.S. Department of Justice to award $50 million to such services for each fiscal year from 2007 to 2011, and the first installment of funding was made available in 2008 when $9.4 million was appropriated to rape crisis centers and other “relevant programs and projects dedicated to assist those victimized by sexual assault.”
Oregon’s latest round of funding will be administered by the Oregon Department of Justice (DOJ) Crime Victims’ Services Division, which works to reduce the impact of violent crime on victims’ lives by supporting statewide access to victim services programs and promoting victims’ rights. The division also strives to ensure that the lines of information and communication regarding treatment remain open, and places a specific emphasis on assault reporting methods. This is particularly important because, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, nine out of 10 sexual assaults are not reported.
In a DOJ public statement, Oregon deputy district attorney-general Mary Williams described the importance of sexual assault remediation funding, saying the current grant allocations “will play an essential role in the coordinated community response to sexual assault by helping victims get the immediate support they need in a time of crisis.”
Oregon Attorney-General John Kroger shares Williams’ sentiment and has made strides in his short time in office to ensure that state programs are in place to help assault victims safely reintegrate back into society.
“One of (Kroger’s) top priorities is services to (sex) crime victims, not only to help them overcome the trauma of sexual abuse but to help them heal and let them continue on with their lives,” DOJ Director of Communications and Policy Tony Green said in an interview.
Though the new funding pool will help victims’ support programs by enabling them to serve 250 sexual assault survivors, fund eight new positions, increase services to marginalized and underserved communities and enhance victim accessibility to crisis hotlines all within the first year, some grant applicants had to be turned down. According to Green, the DOJ saw “more applications than available grants”; therefore, the DOJ was forced to develop award criteria based on need, geographic location, distribution ability and recipient history.
Lane County received the largest piece of grant money, while $58,799 of the SASP funds went to Battered Persons Advocacy in Douglas County, $35,078 went to Catholic Charities in Multnomah County, $45,000 went to Mid-Valley Women’s Crisis Center in Marion County and $52,282 went to the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Washington County.
SASS did not respond to Emerald inquiries for an interview as of press time.
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