Washington crime victim services near collapse as federal funding falls 76% since 2018

The shortfall arrives as Washington faces a projected $1.6 billion budget deficit and the Trump administration implements additional federal spending cuts, threatening services for more than 52,000 survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes who depend on state and federal funding channeled through 140 organizations and 17 tribes statewide — with providers warning that, absent a permanent fix, agencies in rural areas may shut down entirely when the new fiscal year begins in July.

Crime victim service organizations across Washington state are confronting a cascading funding crisis after federal Victims of Crime Act dollars fell 76% between 2018 and 2024 — from $74.7 million to $17.86 million — forcing layoffs of therapists and advocates, reductions in emergency financial assistance, and the closure of at least one children’s advocacy center, according to a report by InvestigateWest distributed through the Associated Press.

Gov. Bob Ferguson’s proposed state budget allocates $12 million for crime victim services in the next fiscal year, roughly $9 million short of the $21.38 million that the state Department of Commerce and service providers say is the absolute minimum required to prevent further collapse. If the Legislature does not act before the new fiscal year begins in July, the Commerce Department says organizations will have to operate with about 47% less funding than they currently receive.

“That ask, really, for this year, is just to not have the entire system collapse,” said Sherrie Tinoco, public policy director at the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “And at the same time, that system is actively breaking.”

A structural decline six years in the making

The Victims of Crime Act, enacted in 1984, is financed by penalties and fines from federal criminal convictions. Starting in 2015, Congress effectively quadrupled the funding available by raising the spending cap, with awards to states peaking in 2018. But the fund’s revenue has since contracted as federal prosecutions declined — particularly for white-collar crimes, which have historically provided the bulk of the fund’s revenue.

For the past five years, the Washington Legislature has provided supplemental state dollars to offset the drop in federal money. Washington allocated $20 million in state funds last year to crime victim services. The combined state and federal funding currently supports more than 52,000 victims per year through 140 organizations and 17 tribes statewide; upward of 70% of that funding flows to domestic violence and sexual assault survivors.

That combination of support is now under simultaneous pressure from both directions. Washington faces a projected $1.6 billion budget shortfall, and Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed in July, will cost the state at least $165 million this biennium alone, according to the governor’s office.

“Many federal dollars are being eliminated or reduced by the Trump Administration. The state is not in a position to backfill all of them,” Brionna Aho, communications director for the governor’s office, said in a written statement to InvestigateWest. “This is one of the few areas of discretionary spending where the governor proposed an investment, which reflects how important these services are.”

Service providers responded immediately after Ferguson released his budget proposal. In a Dec. 23 letter to the governor and Legislature, sexual assault service providers called $21.38 million the “absolute minimum” needed to prevent further statewide collapse.

“We’ve spent the last 50 years encouraging survivors to come forward to seek help. When services become more unreliable, we send a message that their well-being is not that important,” said Kate Garvey, CEO of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, which recently laid off therapists, legal advocates, and administrative staff. “We acknowledge the budget challenges the state faces, but we can’t balance a budget on the backs of child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence survivors.”

Rural areas absorbing the deepest cuts

Rural parts of Washington have felt the funding erosion most acutely. Beyond Survival, a sexual abuse resource center in Grays Harbor County — one of the poorest counties in the state — once employed five full-time advocates; budget constraints have reduced that number to two. One of those advocates, Sara Owen, said she sometimes spends up to six hours a day driving clients to Olympia or Tacoma to find a nurse trained to perform sexual assault exams, because so few are available locally.

The children’s advocacy center in Grays Harbor County closed last year. The Providence Abuse Intervention Center, which provided medical care for child abuse victims across Grays Harbor and four neighboring counties, announced a planned closure at the end of 2025. Providence Swedish reversed that decision after pushback from child advocates, stating on Jan. 7 that services will continue “without interruption” under a new model — but providers said they still expect a significant reduction in medical services and staff.

Rural Resources, which serves victims across five counties in Eastern Washington, cut its budget by about 20% even with added state funding, according to Communications and Outreach Manager Alaina Kowitz.

In Columbia County — a rural county of just 4,000 people in southeastern Washington — there are no dedicated domestic violence services apart from a satellite office managed by a neighboring county’s YWCA, no sexual assault center, no survivor therapy, and no nurses trained to perform sexual assault exams.

A secondary cut at prosecutors’ offices

Crime victim service providers have absorbed a second funding blow since a 2023 state law prompted courts to stop ordering most offenders to pay a $250 to $500 state crime victim penalty. Lawmakers designed the change to protect low-income defendants from compounding debt; the Legislature committed to backfill the lost revenue. That commitment has not been honored.

Russell Brown, executive director of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, estimated that prosecutors’ victim advocate programs should receive about $7 million per year to replace the lost penalty revenue. The state currently provides $2 million annually.

Because of the gap, many prosecutors’ offices can now assign victim advocates only to the most serious cases, such as homicides or violent sexual assaults. Over 80% of domestic violence arrests in Washington are filed as misdemeanors, according to Washington State Patrol data, meaning the majority of domestic violence survivors receive no advocacy support through the court process.

Thurston County, the state’s sixth-most populous county, has reduced from more than three victim advocates to one. The county prosecuting attorney’s office said it is adding back one advocate position in 2026 with local public safety sales tax funds, but its public information officer, Tara Tsehlana, said in an email that “this responsibility should not fall to local jurisdictions.”

State Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline, introduced a bill on Jan. 13 that would reinstate the mandatory state penalty at a higher rate, applicable only to offenders who are financially able to pay. Davis, who relied on a victim advocate during a stalking and protection-order case that stretched more than two years, said she recognizes the penalty-based funding model is not sustainable.

“Nobody’s coming to the rescue. There’s been no additional backfill. All of these positions have been laid off,” Davis said. “It’s not acceptable.”

Long-term solution stalled by cost

Davis and Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, introduced legislation last session that would stabilize victim services funding by requiring the state treasurer to deposit funds into a new victim services account each year, modeled on a similar law in Maryland. The bill drew broad support from law enforcement associations, prosecutors, and service providers — but did not advance, largely because of its cost. Nonpartisan legislative staff estimated the measure would require approximately $155 million to stabilize funding through 2031.

The legislation remains alive this session, but Dhingra said she is not optimistic about its prospects given the state’s fiscal constraints. “So I will be fighting to make sure that we can at least provide the minimum that our organizations need, and that’s the $21.5 million,” Dhingra said.

The governor’s office has encouraged service providers to pursue federal remedies. “We trust people with concerns are reaching out to their federal representatives to urge the restoration of this federal funding,” Aho wrote.

Federal efforts have produced limited relief. A 2021 law known as the “VOCA Fix” added a new revenue source — proceeds from deferred prosecution agreements and pretrial deals the Justice Department increasingly uses for white-collar crimes — but was not sufficient to restore lost funding. A separate VOCA stabilization bill introduced in 2025 with bipartisan support would, if passed, provide a funding boost only through 2029.

Some organizations have also begun limiting their dependence on federal grants after the Trump administration attempted to restrict federal domestic violence prevention dollars from being used to serve undocumented immigrants and LGBTQ victims. A series of lawsuits has blocked those restrictions from taking effect, at least for now, according to The 19th News. YWCA Yakima — which serves an agricultural region with a majority Hispanic population and high rates of domestic violence — declined to apply for a federal Violence Against Women Act award it had previously received, citing those restrictions.

“We’ve chosen to serve our community and not accept that money,” said Cheri Kilty, CEO of YWCA Yakima. “We’re not going to turn anybody away because of their immigration status or however they self-identify.”

As budget negotiations continue in Olympia, service providers said the network’s interlocking nature means funding cuts to any one component reverberate through the rest.

“That whole crime victim services network is so interconnected. When you take away one, it’s not like anybody else is going to take it over,” said Paula Reed, executive director of Children’s Advocacy Centers of Washington. “At some point, there’s a breaking point. And I think that is where we are.”