Alliance: Newsletter: January 2004: Are You Being Served?
Newsletter: January 2004: Are You Being Served?
By [1] Kate Woodrow
New York City’s poor alone would be America’s fifth largest city. And forty-two percent of women receiving public assistance were sexually abused as children. The connections between sexual assault and poverty are impossible to ignore. The anti-poverty and anti-rape movements must work together – for everyone’s sake.Over the past twenty years, advocates compelled the creation of government offices and exacting laws to protect victims of rape. Technological advances such as DNA evidence dramatically increased our ability to prosecute perpetrators. The clinical expertise of rape crisis therapists is probably unmatched in any other group of professionals. Their work has had some far-reaching effects: advocates and therapists were on the piers after September 11th, helping New Yorkers recover a sense of safety.
The anti-rape movement has maintained a focus on the most vulnerable populations by providing free services, creating culturally relevant and multi-lingual resources, encouraging diversity within the movement, and advocating for those who cannot afford services. As a result, many unfair practices have been eradicated. Not long ago, husbands were legally permitted to rape and abuse their wives. And as recently as this year, rape survivors in New York were forced to pay for their own forensic examinations.
But the movement has also experienced a backlash. Even last year’s sweeping legislative victories were bittersweet. New York State took the burden of payment for medical expenses off of the victim’s shoulders; Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month became a national law; the City Council made access to emergency contraception the right of every rape victim. But we also saw funding for services cut, forcing some programs to downsize or shut down, and creating more geographic areas where victims have no where to turn. For example, in the entire Bronx there is only one hospital with specialized sexual assault services in their emergency department – and that program is struggling to maintain services in the current funding climate.
Rape crisis service providers are well aware that cutbacks like the cap placed on federal Victim of Crime Act (VOCA) funds and decreased NY State funding for programs will directly affect service provision for survivors of sexual assault. But the indirect effects of widespread decreases in funding that have gutted federal and social programs for the poor could be equally disastrous for survivors. The current federal administration is spending less and less on services for the most needy in our country. In a few short years, they have rolled back decades of social policy gains. The dreadful impacts of these changes on working families are well documented. Scratch the surface and it’s easy to see that service cutbacks are an attack on survivors of violence, as well as a war on America’s poor.
A shift in federal thinking about homelessness has led to cuts in drug treatment and job-skills training – programs vital in helping the homeless achieve and maintain permanent housing and become economically self-sufficient. Welfare recipients are even being forced to take parenting classes, in an attempt to punish and stigmatize the poor.
Welfare cuts – and the focus on marriage incentives rather than benefits -- have left many women and children without means for survival. The cuts reduce opportunities for working women, and routinely force them to remain in abusive relationships. Senator Paul Wellstone put it well: “If you’re going to be talking about real welfare reform…you have to consider the circumstances of women…[if not] we will force these women and these children into very dangerous situations and we are not going to let that happen in the United States.”
NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund President Kathy Rodgers concurs. “Our message is clear…welfare reform cannot lift women out of poverty unless it addresses the scourge of domestic violence and sexual violence. … We don’t object to marriage, but you don’t need to spend government money on it. … When it comes to domestic violence, we know what the problem is and we know the solutions. … If we do the right thing, we can save lives.”
The most vulnerable, at-risk kids are even being targeted as criminals. A bill pending in the New York State Assembly would increase the penalty for children “loitering for the purpose of prostitution,” subjecting them to juvenile court detention. New York-based End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT-USA) urged legislators not to criminalize these young victims. According to ECPAT, “the idea of detaining these children with the purpose of providing services is moot because currently services and residential facilities are extremely limited. Incarcerating these youth offers them nothing but further trauma.”
An ECPAT-USA report released in 2001 exposed the truth that most children who are prostituted come from homes or foster care settings where they were sexually or otherwise abused – an issue that has been largely ignored until recently. “Kids involved in prostitution are considered to be bad kids,” testified John Lindsey at a City Council hearing on prostituted children last year. “They are not seen as children in many people’s minds, simply because they are exploited in the sex industry.”
Here in New York City, we are unduly burdened by the national fiscal crisis. According to City Council Speaker Gifford Miller’s Fair Share Campaign, our city sent Washington $6.3 billion more than we got back in 2001, and sent Albany $3.5 billion more than they returned. Meanwhile, New Yorkers foot the bill for our own safety, including a $110 million budget for NYPD national security efforts.
A shift in federal thinking is forcing cities to starve service programs that help people who are homeless. CityLimits.org reports that fifty-seven service-only providers in the city will be forced to shut down when their HUD contracts expire in 2004 and 2005. These programs provide drug treatment, mental healthcare, transportation, job-skills training and more – helping clients achieve and maintain permanent housing and economic self-sufficiency. The majority of homeless women and children are on the street because of violence in the home. Many women on welfare and most women with drug addictions have a history of sexual abuse. Sexual assault and domestic violence are also significant barriers to employment, and cuts to TANF will directly affect services that inform and screen for sexual and domestic violence in welfare applicants.
Poverty and rape are both misunderstood problems that are ineffectively responded to by our government. Poor people don’t need pity or scorn, they need services and support to become self-sufficient citizens – just as rape victims need justice and support to fulfill their potential in the face of trauma. Without addressing the violence in their lives, how can programs assist the nation’s growing population of poor people in becoming economically self-sufficient? The anti-poverty and anti-rape movements serve an often-overlapping population, and face some of the same challenges and goals. If the movements undertake these challenges together, we will be stronger.
Kate Woodrow is the Outreach and Education Associate at The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault.
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[1]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_author_1.html
[2]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_author_1.html
[3]: http://www.nycagainstrape.org/home/nycaasa/stage.nycagainstrape.org/newsletter_article_148.html
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