YWCA of Hawaii Island’s Sexual Assault Support Services is facing a potential loss of $100,000 in annual funding because of constraints on federal grants.
The crisis center known as SASS offers a 24/7 confidential hotline for calls and texts — (808) 935-0677 — where sex assault victims can disclose an assault or access support and guidance. An online chat feature also has been available on weekdays from 8 a.m. to noon for about two years at www.ywcahawaiiisland.org.
“Sex assault is about power. It doesn’t matter if you are a supermodel, if you are a drunk college girl, if you are a small child who is vulnerable, if you are an elderly person with dementia,” said SASS Program Director Lisa Lucia. “If you are human, you’re vulnerable.”
Nationally, an average of 1 out of every 4 women and 1 in 6 men experience sexual assault. In Hawaii, a 2016 study by the Sex Abuse Treatment Center of Hawaii found an average of 42.1 rapes reported per 100,000 residents.
In both instances, those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg, YWCA CEO Kathleen McGilvray said.
“This is one of the most prevalent crimes, but it’s hardly ever reported. It’s under-reported chronically,” McGilvray said.
SASS has been serving the Big Island for over 40 years with headquarters in both Hilo and Kona, but as funding is tightened and staffing needs aren’t able to be met, services are harder to offer islandwide.
“This program has been underfunded for years, and it’s just getting worse,” McGilvray said. “Our funding streams have been cut multiple times. We used to have education — we no longer have education supplied, so we can’t go out.”
McGilvray said the organization’s ability to provide vital age-appropriate education that empowers people of all ages and genders to protect themselves from sexual assault has been fiscally out of reach for SASS since before the pandemic.
“If you can help them break the cycle (with education and disclosure opportunities), that’s the only way that hopefully, one day, we can go out of business for a good reason, not because we lost money,” Lucia said.
Curricula SASS has used previously includes teaching elementary school age children as young a kindergarten the difference between “good touches and bad touches, good secrets and bad secrets” and older students from middle school to college ages about identifying abusive partners and escaping harmful relationships.
McGilvray said YWCA doesn’t have the funding to hire enough trauma-informed advocates to be able to provide education in addition to the 24-hour crisis support.
“The Department of Education just rolled out a new state mandate: Every classroom — kindergarten through high school — has to go through Sexual Violence Prevention Education by the end of 2026. Knowing what we’ve done in the past and what we want to do in the future and how we want to partner, we do need to help them do that,” Lucia said.
“Our biggest goal is to be available for them in those areas of disclosures, because I think that a lot of these conversations are going to happen at school, but the teachers and the administrators, they’re not prepared. That’s the reality.”
McGilvray explained that SASS relies on funding from federal grants through the Violence Against Women Act and the Victims of Crime Act that are divided among all states. The portion of the funding that gets to Hawaii is then divided among the state attorney general’s office, hospitals, other sexual assault service programs and the police department.
Some of the funding from grants and events also helps SASS cover forensic exams for sex assault victims they assist, a cost McGilvray said is shared with the Hawaii Police Department.
McGilvray and Lucia said the loss of funding they face could affect their ability to provide those exams, run the hotline, or offer counseling.
“Those two are being constricted,” McGilvray said of the potential loss of up to $100,000 in funding from VAWA and VOCA, which equals 20% of the program’s annual budget. “Federal and state money is what funds all of our programs. Our needs have not gone down, but our funding keeps getting constricted.”
The annual “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes Men’s March Against Sexual Violence” is one funding source the organization can depend on, Lucia and McGilvray said. At the event, men wear high heels to walk in support of survivors, advocate for an end to sexual violence, and raise money for SASS.
The event raises about $20,000 per year.
“Getting men involved in the conversation about how to stop sexual violence and gender-based violence is fabulous,” McGilvray said. “This is a community issue. This is a way to have men involved in the solution, not the problem that affects their wives and daughters and sons.”
Register for and donate to the 16th annual “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” fundraiser on Saturday by visiting www.ywcahawaiiisland.org/event/walk-a-mile-in-her-shoes/.
Anyone interested in volunteering for SASS or any registered nurses who would like to be trained as a sexual assault nurse examiner can email email Lucia at llucia@ywcahawaiiisland.org.
Email Kyveli Diener at kdiener@hawaiitribune-herald.com.