Domestic violence services are in jeopardy, providers say

Yahoo

09-05-2025

K.C., a stay-at-home mother in North Canton, Ohio, knew her husband had hidden multiple guns around their home. He never pointed the weapons at her, but he routinely invoked them to silence her during arguments.
"I was always living in fear, walking on eggshells, having to do everything to make him happy and just not saying anything to upset him," said K.C., who asked to be identified only by her initials because of safety concerns.
In 2023, days after her husband sexually assaulted her, K.C. said that she discovered a loaded pistol in the closet and two shotguns in the attic. With no family or friends to turn to, she started calling domestic violence shelters, eventually finding a room at the Hope and Healing Resource Center in Akron.
"It literally was my saving grace," K.C. said. "If I didn't have Hope and Healing—a place to go, a place of refuge—I would be on the streets."
Now, services like these are on the chopping block, a potential casualty of President Donald Trump's effort to shrink the federal government, The Trace reports. Domestic violence groups, already stretched thin, warn that looming cuts to federal grants, coupled with a dwindling federal workforce, are likely to gut resources for survivors seeking to escape abusers.
After the Trump administration imposed a widespread pause on federal grants and loans in January, the Office of Violence Against Women, or OVW, abruptly scrubbed its website of grant opportunities and told organizations not to bother finalizing applications.
OVW is one of the largest sources of federal grants to combat domestic abuse. Between 2021 and 2025, the office doled out $2.2 billion to support crisis hotlines, provide mental health counseling, and help survivors secure housing. Federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to resume funding to existing grantees, but the president has appealed those rulings, putting the program's future in limbo.
"We may be able to breathe in this moment, but we're also holding our breath simultaneously," said Anastacia Snyder, the executive director of Catalyst, a domestic violence group in Northern California. "What this did was sow the seeds of fear and chaos into the fabric of our services."
Adding to the uncertainty is the Republican spending package Congress passed in March. Pushed through with some Democratic support to avert a government shutdown, the package empowered the Trump administration to cancel or redirect federal dollars. Domestic violence groups are now bracing for the possibility that Trump will stop the OVW funding once the existing grants expire at the end of the fiscal year in September.
"You have to reapply every year for those awards," said Jennifer Pollitt Hill, executive director of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Abuse. "Without those federal funds, most agencies will cease to exist entirely."
The Justice Department, which oversees the OVW, declined to comment.
Domestic violence groups say the funding uncertainty has them weighing layoffs, reduced hours, and shelter closures.
Artika Roller, the executive director of Cornerstone Advocacy Service in Minnesota, said her group may have to close its shelter, displacing approximately 30 survivors. "If those services are not available for victims and survivors, then they may have to make decisions of staying with someone that is doing harm," she said.
The turmoil coincides with a Trump administration push to establish a process for people with criminal convictions, including those for domestic abuse, to legally own guns again. Federal law bars gun ownership by people found guilty of felonies or certain misdemeanor domestic violence crimes. But a rule the Justice Department proposed in March would allow the attorney general to restore gun rights based on a person's "past criminal activity and their subsequent and current law-abiding behavior." On April 3, The New York Times reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi had approved allowing the actor Mel Gibson to own guns again after he pleaded no contest in 2011 to misdemeanor battery against a former girlfriend.
Domestic violence advocates have decried the proposed rule. "It's taken us decades to get to the place where we recognize the risk associated with firearms, and I cannot fathom making a decision that would undo that," said Anna Harper, the executive vice president of Emerge Center Against Domestic Abuse in Tucson.
About 75 percent—$7 million—of the Emerge Center's annual budget comes from federal funding, Harper said. That money supports a range of services, including a program in which the center works with police and the local domestic violence court to monitor gun-related cases. An OVW grant pays for court advocates to shepherd the survivors through the legal system and create safety plans when their abusers are about to regain access to guns.
Harper now says she might have to lay off the advocates. "When we talk about intervening and domestic violence fatalities," Harper said, "those advocates and the services they provide are really critical."
While groups are seeking to court new donors, Leeann Luna, the CEO of Monarch Services, a domestic violence group in Santa Cruz County, California, said there is not enough private funding to go around. "Unfortunately, it's really tricky because, while we are creating partnerships and relationships for funding with, say, private foundations, it still isn't going to rise to the amount that the federal government gives us," she said.
Even if the White House renews the grant programs, Luna said the administration's staffing cuts could hinder groups' access to the money. "All of these grants are reimbursement-based," she said. "If he (Trump) continues to let people go, is that going to then impact our ability to receive payment in a timely manner, or even at all?"
Several advocates expressed concern about federal funding losses jeopardizing efforts to disarm abusers. In January, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, published a study showing that 85 percent of men who self-reported committing domestic abuse also owned a gun. Previous research has found that abusers with access to firearms are five times more likely to kill their partners.
OVW has funded programs to help survivors obtain court orders to temporarily remove guns from their abusers. But Jennifer Wagman, co-associate director of UCLA's Center for Gender and Health Justice, said many survivors are still unaware of the process, and even when such orders are issued, enforcement is lackluster.
"These funding cuts can make an already challenged system even less effective," Wagman said.
At the Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center, where K.C. received help, CEO Teresa Stafford-Wright, said her group was trying to reapply for funding for its court program when the grant opportunities disappeared from OVW's website. Now, she is worried about keeping that program running.
"We are already at capacity with the work that we're doing with the funding that we have," Stafford-Wright said.
K.C. credits Hope And Healing with landing her a job and an apartment for her and her kids. Without federal funding, she said, other survivors won't get the help they need.
"Nobody should continue to live in abuse," she said. "Pulling funding definitely would alter the dynamics and enable abusers to continue the cycle over and over."
This story was produced by The Trace and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.