Amid a pandemic that has upended life across the globe, survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault have faced even greater obstacles over the past year finding or accessing support, experts said Wednesday.
Many social services and advocacy organizations had to “pivot into remote services practically overnight,” Jane Doe Inc. Executive Director Debra Robbin told attendees during a briefing and panel discussion.
Despite those best efforts, leaders of several groups that work with sexual and domestic violence survivors said the past year has put vulnerable populations even more at risk and exacerbated the challenges they face
Restrictions on public activity and travel have made some survivors feel even more constrained in dangerous situations, they said. The sudden shift to technology to execute daily functions left behind those with limited internet access or proficiency. And many lower-income residents were rocked by the unemployment wave.
“During the pandemic, our community got hit so hard,” Kourou Pich, executive director of Chelsea-based HarborCOV said at a Wednesday briefing. “The survivors we’re working with are low- to no-income survivors. When the pandemic hit, it just added more layers to that in terms of losing their housing, losing their child care, losing their food security.”
At Womanshelter/Companeras, a western Massachusetts organization supporting women and children affected by domestic violence, executive director Carmen Nieves has seen firsthand the technology gaps exposed by the shift to remote work.
Nieves said her group “never stopped being busy” once the pandemic hit, but now, survivors must go through virtual judicial and police processes to secure restraining orders.
“If you don’t have the bandwidth to do that, if you don’t have internet access, if you don’t have access to a smartphone, an iPhone that’s able to do all of that downloading documents and filling that out, that is something you’re not able to do,” Nieves said. “Shame on us that you’re not able to file a restraining order in Massachusetts if you don’t have technology to do that.”
Advocates urged lawmakers to focus on several issues, such as mandating greater language access in government and support services, as a way to help mitigate the pressure survivors face, particularly those who are immigrants or who have limited English proficiency.
Addressing structural problems such as a lack of affordable housing and affordable child care could go a long way toward supporting survivors, Pich said, by offering them the stability they need to move forward.
JDI highlighted several bills it hopes to see prioritized this session, including high-profile legislation supporters dubbed the “Safe Communities Act” (SD 532 / HD 1165) that would limit local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts and another bill (SD 2181 / HD 3192) expanding options for survivors of domestic assault or human trafficking to expunge or seal criminal records.
“Too often, survivors are criminalized or enter into criminal systems for what they did in order to survive,” said Hema Sarang-Sieminski, JDI’s policy director. “That might be substance abuse or trade, it might mean sex work, it might mean economic crimes, but criminal histories make access to jobs and housing far more difficult to access for survivors.”
As the Legislature gears up for its debate on Gov. Charlie Baker’s $45.6 billion fiscal year 2022 budget, advocates on Wednesday praised the funding levels in Baker’s spending bill.
The fiscal 2021 budget increased funding for domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and treatment by more than $12 million over the prior year, and it gave a $50,000 boost to the Healthy Relationships Grant Program and a $1.3 million increase to the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program.
Baker’s fiscal 2022 proposal would level-fund the biggest domestic violence and sexual assault prevention and treatment line item and would slightly decrease funds for the other two programs highlighted.
On all three of those spending sections, Baker’s proposal mirrors JDI’s request.
“The investment that this Legislature made in sexual and domestic violence services for fiscal ’21 was life-giving amidst an incredibly challenging time,” Sarang-Sieminski said. “I am so grateful for the legislators here and all behind the scenes who heard our programs when they talked about the impact of the pandemic and talked about the increase in demand for services and the complexity of delivering services during this time.”
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