Lewiston, Maine

Rebecca Austin runs a nonprofit organization called Safe Voices. Early this year her group opened a new resource center for victims of domestic violence. She proudly describes it as the “highest evolution” of what such a facility can do for its community. But Austin fears that both the center and a safe house for human trafficking victims will lose federal funding and have to shut down.

“No one seems to know the answers to what’s going to happen and if money is actually going to come through,” Austin was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times guest essay.

Safe Voices had been awarded the same grant for the last 12 years through the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, a 1984 law that funds crisis services and shelters After Donald Trump took office, those grants were frozen and then unfrozen, Austin said. Then applications for the next round of funding were delayed by three months.

Domestic-abuse homicides accounted for about 49% of Maine’s total homicides from 2020 to 2022, according to a state report. “Year after year we are seeing that number,” Austin told the Lewiston Sun Journal, adding that “one of the things that we know can change that and can impact either better prosecution outcomes, better engagement with law enforcement, better connection to resources and supports is availability of advocacy services… Advocates are helping to make the way our system partners interact with these cases easier and better. We are helping survivors leave and flee when that’s what they need to do to seek safety.”  

If Safe Voices loses its grant, it will have to dismiss as many as 16 of its 36 staff members, Austin said. If the safe house has to close, Maine will lose the only confidential home for victims of sex trafficking the state has.