Frederica Freyberg:
A 70% drop in federal funding to states to help victims of crime has advocates warning of dire consequences. The grants to states for victim services are funded through federal fines and fees paid by people convicted of a crime, but the federal fund has sharply declined, leaving Wisconsin’s annual funding expected to go for more than $44 million to roughly $13 million. The Wausau organization called The Women’s Community, whose services help thousands of victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking, fears the loss of services. Its executive director, Jane Graham Jennings, is here. Thanks very much for being here.

Jane Graham Jennings:
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what is the expectation about how the drop in grant funds will affect your services?

Jane Graham Jennings:
Well, you know, the thing about serving victims of abuse is it’s not just one community. So the drop in funds will definitely impact Marathon County, which is where we serve and the Wausau community, but it will impact every community in our state, because all of the programs that are currently funded will see a significant decrease statewide. So for The Women’s Community in particular, and the other thing that is — makes a little bit difficult for us to plan is we won’t actually know the total decrease that we get until August or September, just the way the grant process works. So we won’t really know. In the best-case scenario, we will be losing about $234,000, and that’s just for The Women’s Community.

Frederica Freyberg:
How do you even weather such a loss?

Jane Graham Jennings:
We’ve been trying to plan for it for a while. The state administrators have been exceptional in trying to keep us informed and planning for a while. This problem would have happened a few years ago except there were some ARPA dollars that the state was able to put in to plug the gap. So that kept us operating and being able to keep our services operational for an additional two years, but that money is going away, so now we’re going to see those cuts. So our board has been planning. We’ve been talking about it. We have some funds for a rainy day and then we just search for other dollars. But again, we don’t know exactly how much that is going to be. So as soon as we know, then we’re going to be rolling out all of our plans.

Frederica Freyberg:
How important are victim services and what are some examples of what community of women offers?

Jane Graham Jennings:
So we work with anyone who has been a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking. Adults, children, men, women, anyone who has been impacted. Services include a number of things. One thing that people are most familiar with is our shelter service, and that’s a place where people who are in violent situations, trying to flee, to move into safe housing can stay with us for a short time in an emergency shelter. That’s going to be impacted drastically by the funding cuts. We provide ongoing supportive advocacy, because when people have been harmed by someone they love, which is most often what’s happening in sexual assault, and is the case of what’s happening in domestic violence, it’s really a traumatic experience and people are trying to figure out how to survive and how to rebuild their lives. No one wants to come to services like The Women’s Community because if you need our services, something really bad has happened to you or someone you love. So people come to us as a last resort and we want to be there to help rebuild them. They come to us feeling broken and ashamed and judged and that no one believes them or supports them, and we want to help them rebuild that spirit. Really, their soul has been crushed by the trauma that they’ve experienced and we just try to help rebuild that. We often use the analogy of a butterfly. People come to us and they feel like they’re the squishy, ugly caterpillar that people just want to step on and then they go into their cocoon and in a short time, they emerge beautiful and free and that’s the process we get to see when people come to us broken and they leave us strong at the broken places.

Frederica Freyberg:
Is domestic and sexual violence against women on the rise?

Jane Graham Jennings:
Unfortunately, it is. The most recent — in the state of Wisconsin, End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin does a domestic violence-related homicide report. And the last one that was complete was in 2022 and 96 people in Wisconsin lost their lives due to domestic violence. Unfortunately, we are one of the top 10 states in the nation that has the highest level of domestic-related homicides in the country. So this is not something that we are proud of and we’re working really hard to figure out how we can make an impact, but there’s still so much blaming that is done. Victims are still blamed for so much of it. People ask questions about victims’ behavior. Why do victims stay in abusive relationships, instead of really asking the question, why does someone who claims to love harm the person they claim to love? There’s just not an incentive for people to behave better. We need people to stop being harmful.

Frederica Freyberg:
We have many more questions but we leave it there. Jane Graham Jennings, thank you very much. Thanks for your work.

Jane Graham Jennings:
Thank you.