>> Attorney General William Gardner, thanks very much.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> A 70% drop in federal funding
to states to help victims of crime has advocates warning of
dire consequences. The grants to states for victim services are
funded through federal fines and fees paid by people convicted of
a crime, but the federal fund has sharply declined, leaving
Wisconsin's annual funding expected to go from more than
$44 million to roughly 13 million. The Wausau
organization, called the Women's Community, whose services help
thousands of victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault and human
trafficking, fears the loss of services. Its executive
director, Jane Graham Jennings, is here, and thanks very much
for being here. >> Thank you. I'm happy to be
here. about how the drop in grant
funds will affect your services? >> Well, you know, the thing
about serving victims of abuse, is it's not just one community.
So these the drop in funds will definitely impact the marathon
County, which is where we serve. And the Wausau community. But it
will impact every community in our state because all of the
programs that are currently funded will see a significant fe
women's community in particular, and the other thing that is,
makes a little bit difficult for us to plan is we won't actually
know the total decrease that we get until August or September,
just the way the grant process works. So we won't really know.
In the best case scenario, we will be losing about $234,000.
And that's just for the women's community.
>> How do you even weather such a loss?
>> We've been trying to plan for it for a while. The, the state
administrators have been exceptional in trying to keep us
informed and planning for a while, this problem would have
happened, a few years ago, except there were some Arpa
dollars that the state was able to put in to plug the gap so
that kept us operating and being able to keep our services
operational for an additional two years. But that money is
going away. So now we're going to see those cuts. So our board
has been planning we've been talking about it. We have some
funds for Rainy Day, and then we just search for other dollars.
But again, we don't know exactly how much that is going to be, so
as soon as we know, then we're going to be rolling out all of
our plans. services and what are some
examples of what Community of Women offers?
>> So we work with anyone who has been a victim of domestic
violence, sexual assault, Adults, children, men, women,
anyone who has been impacted. Services include a number of
things. One thing that people are most familiar with is our
shelter service, and that's a place where people who are in
violent situations trying to flee, to move into safe housing
can stay with us for a short time in an emergency shelter,
that's going to be impacted drastically by the funding cuts,
we provide ongoing supportive advocacy because when people
have been harmed by someone they love, which is most often what's
happening in sexual assault, and is the case of what's happening
in domestic violence, it's really a traumatic experience.
And people are trying to figure out how to survive and how to
rebuild their lives. No one wants to come to services like
the women's community, because if you need our services,
something really bad has happened to you or someone you
love, so people come to us as a last resort and we want to be
there to help rebuild them. They come to us feeling broken and
ashamed and judged, and that no one believes them or supports
them. And we want to help them rebuild that spirit, really,
their soul has been crushed by the trauma that they've
experienced, and we just try to help rebuild that, we often use
the analogy of a butterfly. People come to us and they feel
like they're the squishy, ugly caterpillar that people just
want to step on, and then they go into their cocoon and in a
short time, they emerge. Beautiful and free. And that's
the process we get to see when people come to us broken, and
they leave us strong at the broken places.
>> Is domestic and sexual violence against women on the
rise? most recent in the state of
Wisconsin and domestic abuse. Wisconsin does a domestic
violence related homicide report, and the last one that
was complete was in 2022. And 96 people in Wisconsin lost their
lives due to domestic violence. Unfortunately, we are one of the
top ten states in the nation that has the highest level of
domestic related homicides in the country. So this is not
something that we are proud of, and we're working really hard to
figure out how we can make an impact, but there's still, so
much blaming that is done, victims are still blamed for so
much of it. People ask questions about victims behavior. Why do
victims stay in abusive relationships instead of really
asking the question, why does someone who claims to love harm
the person they claim to love? There's just not an incentive
for people to behave better. We need people to stop being
harmful. >> We have many more questions,
but we leave it there. Jane Graham Jennings, thank you very