DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the June 13, 2024, installment of From the Director’s Desk. We’re glad you’re able join us today. All audio lines are muted, as this is a listen-only briefing. For reference, this recording will be posted tomorrow to the OVC website. At this time, it’s my pleasure to introduce Kristina Rose, OVC Director, for today’s briefing.
KRISTINA ROSE: Thank you very much, Daryl. Good afternoon, everyone, or good evening, good morning, wherever you are in the world. Happy Pride Month! June is full of commemorations, and in addition to Pride, we’re also recognizing Gun Violence Awareness and World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on June 15.
And speaking of Gun Violence Awareness, I had the honor of giving remarks at Hackensack Meridian Health’s Gun Violence Awareness Day event at the Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey. I had the opportunity to tour Project Heal there, and that is their hospital-based victim services program that’s funded through OJP’s Community Violence Intervention Initiative. My colleague, Sharron Fletcher, who’s the lead on our CVI work, accompanied me on the trip. We were extremely impressed with the intensive collaboration and partnerships established by Project Heal within the hospital system, like with the psychiatry and behavioral health unit, and the social determinants of health. They have wonderful support from the hospital administration, including from the president of the medical center and the CEO. I want to thank the medical director of Project Heal, Dr. Aakash Shah, and the entire Project Heal team for inviting me to be part of their event and for the life-saving work that they are doing every day.
Last month, I had to prerecord this broadcast because I was in Arlington, Texas, for their Human Trafficking and Victimization Summit. The Arlington Police Department is a member of the Tarrant County Human Trafficking Task Force, which is one of our grantees. Over the last 2 years, the Arlington Police Department formed a Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Unit. They call it HEAT. It was developed to better investigate cases where victims are being sexually exploited online and trafficked. The HEAT unit has also implemented a school program called Traffic Stop in the Arlington School District that is there to teach high school students about the dangers of human trafficking.
While in Arlington, my colleague Alissa Huntoon and I visited the Alliance for Children, which is a children’s advocacy center. They work very closely with the Arlington Police Department. It’s led by CEO Julie Evans and the center works with victims of child abuse and their families to navigate the criminal justice process and connect them with resources. I was, again, very impressed with the clinical component of the center as well as the strong collaborations they’ve established with their Federal, state, and local partners. The center was recently redesigned, and it is a beautiful place. It was very easy to see that this center puts children first. I want to thank Julie and her team, and especially at the Arlington Police Department, I want to thank Assistant Chief Tarrick McGuire, who invited me to the event, and to Lieutenant Huggins, who provided our logistical support while we were there in Arlington.
The 40th anniversary of the Victims of Crime Act is fast approaching. I’ve been reflecting on the anniversary, and all that it means to the field, and I find myself drawn back to the final report from the President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime, which was published in 1982 and was the impetus for the Victims of Crime Act and the Crime Victims Fund among many other innovations in victims’ services. In reading the report again, it struck me how ahead of its time it really is. Though we consider it best practice now to include survivors when we make recommendations about criminal justice policy and practice, I don’t think it was such a thing in 1982. But this task force did it. They relied on the voices of survivors to give their report legitimacy, practicality, and the authenticity it needed to support the recommendations that they made.
The report even includes a section called, “Victims of Crime in America,” that provides quotes from survivors, excerpts from their task force testimony, and, what I found most interesting, a bold, first-person dramatization of what a victim endures – essentially, a composite of a victim of crime in America. As a lead-in to that section of the report, there’s a quote that says, “What follows next is a window into the victims’ experience. The Task Force strongly urges you to read it before you go further. You cannot appreciate the victim problem if you approach it solely with your intellect. The intellect rebels.”
Well, I love this because it shows me that even then, this group of individuals—this is before we had so many of the services and the awareness we have now of victim services. They understood the importance of empathy and placing the reader in the shoes of the victim in order to have a sense of the terror, the trauma, the life-altering changes that occur when someone or someone you love has been impacted by crime. Without that, it’s too easy to ignore, overlook, or dismiss the reality of what a victim of crime endures and the heavy burden that they carry.
I’ve selected portions of the task force report for our OVC book club meeting in September. The final report is available online, so maybe even you will be inspired to take a look at it and let us know your thoughts.
In the funding world, we just released our final solicitation for FY 2024, and it’s our field-generated solicitation for expanding access and increasing options for victims of crime. I want to remind all of you about one of our newest solicitations, Meeting the Basic Needs of Crime Survivors in Underserved Communities. These grants will help programs in communities hard-hit by crime to address the basic needs of crime victims, like transportation, temporary or transitional housing, clothing, food, and other items that assist with their well-being, their healing, or their safety.
This solicitation, importantly, is part of a pilot project to streamline the grant application process and make it easier for applicants from smaller, community-based organizations in underserved areas to apply for federal funding.
In addition to being a different color (yes, the solicitation is in a different color!) and also in plain language, this solicitation offers applicants multiple ways to submit their project narratives. Instead of having to write a 20-page project narrative, applicants can submit project plans by using a questionnaire, a video, or an oral presentation. Since this is such a unique funding opportunity, we’re actually offering two pre-application webinars—one on June 18 and another on June 20. Both will be held at 3:00 p.m. eastern time. If you visit the “Funding Webinars” section of our website, you can register there. The link is in the solicitation.
Now for a few updates.
First, $80.1 million dollars was deposited into the Crime Victims Fund in April. The balance of the fund currently sits at just over $1.5 billion. I was hoping we would have the May numbers by now, but we don’t. We are expecting them any moment. Keep an eye on the website, where we will update that information as soon as we get that.
Second, we have selected April 6–12 for the 2025 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. It’s a bit earlier in the month than in past years, but we wanted to be mindful of spring breaks, religious holidays, and other important events that happen in April and this was the best way to be able to do that. Please mark this week on your calendar so that you can plan to be with us in Washington next year for Crime Victims’ Rights Week and come to our vigil and our ceremony.
Third, the nomination period for Crime Victims’ Service Awards is going to open soon. We will be accepting nominations in the same five categories as last year. Those categories are the—
- National Crime Victim Service Award,
- Allied Professional Award,
- Survivor Voices Award,
- Building Knowledge Through Research Award, and
- Tomorrow’s Leader Award.
I urge you to submit a nomination. We have a formal peer-review process that we use each year to select the awardees. It’s a very competitive program because there are so many deserving people out there. Even though we don’t have the dates, we will have them very soon. I wanted to let you know about it now so you could begin thinking about who you want to propose for these awards and even start writing.
There’s also going to be a revamped online nomination program, and as I said, we’ll let you know when it’s open for those nominations. The nominations are due in early August, so that’s why it’s important to get started now.
The last thing I have is on the proposed rule for Crime Victim Compensation. We are still responding to the thousands of comments that we received. I have to say, it is going very well. Staff is working so hard on getting them all answered, and I am truly grateful for every single person who took the time to submit a comment. The information submitted has been so informative, enlightening, and it is making it such a better process.
That’s all I have for today. Thank you all for everything that you do to help crime victims find their justice. Take care and we will see you next month.
