Louisiana’s largest provider of aid to sexual assault survivors is cutting back services due to the federal government shutdown. (Wes Muller/Louisiana Illuminator).
Louisiana’s largest provider of aid for sexual assault survivors cut back on services this month as a result of not receiving funding before the federal government shutdown.
Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response, or STAR, had to halt its hospital accompaniment program, where staff members support victims going through an evidence-gathering medical exam after a sexual assault.
STAR serves sexual assault survivors in 15 parishes in central and southeast Louisiana. The organization’s hospital accompaniment services will stop for the foreseeable future in St. Tammany Parish and the New Orleans area, where other nonprofits also provide that service.
In Baton Rouge and Alexandria, STAR hopes to be able to resume hospital accompaniment in November after not offering it in October. But the organization will have to cut back on other services to do so, said Morgan Lamandre, its CEO. In those regions, STAR is the only entity to send staff into hospitals.
To pay for hospital accompaniment in Baton Rouge and Alexandria, Lamandre will have to shut down STAR’s case management program. It gives sexual assault survivors help accessing crime victims’ funding, health care and other assistance in the weeks and months after their assault. Those processes can be bureaucratic and confusing for those not used to navigating them, which is why STAR offers that support to their clients.
But Lamandre said the organization has to prioritize its hospital accompaniment program in Baton Rouge and Alexandria because the nonprofit needs to offer the service in order to keep its accreditation and some other funding.
STAR and other Louisiana organizations that help sexual assault survivors have found themselves in a difficult financial position because much of their funding has been cut off while the federal government is shuttered.
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During previous D.C. shutdowns, federal assistance for crime victims continued to flow. But the Trump administration has shuttered the federal crime victim offices this time, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault executive director Rafael de Castro said in an interview earlier this month.
In the case of STAR, the organization was awarded a $700,000 federal grant it can’t access because the federal staff who administer it are not working. The nonprofit had also expected to hear at the beginning of October about whether it had won a $1.2 million grant it typically receives every year. But with the government closed, a notice about the award hasn’t been sent yet.
“We could have the grant, but we don’t know if we have the grant. We need to assume we are not getting the grant,” Lamandre said.
The shutdown resulted from an impasse in Congress over the extent to which the federal government should subsidize health care coverage for people who purchase their insurance through a government exchange. Democrats want a vote assuring tax credits to make those health plans more affordable will continue. Republicans believe the debate over the cost of the health care plans should be dealt with separately.
In the meantime, more than a million federal employees are not getting paid, and scores of federally funded services are not being provided.
Louisiana lawmakers announced last week they plan to use $150 million monthly to help pay for residents’ groceries while a federal food assistance program isn’t operating.
Lamandre and de Castro said they intend to ask for $2 million in permanent state funding for sexual assault survivor centers to be added to the Louisiana budget next year. Over half of STAR’s budget currently comes from federal grants, but Lamandre fears Washington, D.C., will no longer provide financial stability for her organization and others.
Louisiana also provides very little of its own funding for sexual assault survivor support and programs. This year, the state’s domestic violence shelters and child advocacy centers, which serve children who are victims of abuse, received $7 million and $1.2 million in general state revenue, respectively. Sexual assault survivor centers received no comparable allocation.
“There are no state dollars provided to stand-alone sexual assault centers like STAR,” Lamandre said.
Louisiana uses unclaimed gambling winnings each year to pay hospitals, nurses and other medical providers for performing forensic medical exams, during which physical evidence of a sexual crime can be collected. That fund has about $6.2 million currently, but it doesn’t pay for counseling, legal assistance or the other support sexual assault survivor centers provide, according to the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement.
A new law, sponsored by state Rep. Kellee Dickerson, R-Denham Springs, was crafted with the intention of creating a new source of funding for sexual assault, child abuse and domestic violence victim service providers. But Lamandre has doubts that it will become a reliable source of money.
The law assesses a new $2,000 fine on people convicted of crimes related to sexual assault, human trafficking and domestic violence. In theory, it could produce over $1 million per year based on the approximately 500 convictions these offenses produce annually, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
But people imprisoned for such crimes often don’t have the means to pay criminal fines after they become incarcerated. Prison jobs pay as little as less than a dollar per hour, and incarcerated people have other financial obligations – such as child support and victim reparations – they are also required to cover, according to previous reports on Louisiana’s criminal justice system.
A financial analysis of the new law also notes that the $1 million might be difficult to collect on time, explaining that “current law provides that indigent offenders may be placed on a payment plan and therefore the $2,000 may be dispersed across multiple fiscal years.”
“The likeliness we will see any meaningful funding from that bill is not so high,” Lamandre said at a legislative hearing last month on child sexual abuse.
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