‘Not a bargaining chip’: Spokane victim advocacy groups grapple with federal funding cuts

A Spokane woman was abused, stalked and controlled by a man whom she loved for over a decade, and nobody believed her.

Nobody – save her father in Arizona and local victim advocacy groups.

“I mean, I was strangled. I was stalked,” Kaila Shumaker said. “He even had people he knew try to keep tabs on me. Made up lies so most of my family won’t talk to me. Just all those things.”

After making contact with Lutheran Community Services around five years ago, Shumaker, 40, gathered the courage to file a sexual assault report and talk to detectives – something she said she wouldn’t have been able to do on her own. It didn’t help, she added, that the detective was male.

“It’s scary. It’s intimidating. It’s embarrassing. I mean, especially because it was a person that I thought I loved and I thought that loved me, and then here they were doing these horrible, really invasive things to me that – I knew and know what happened, but because of the situation, there sadly isn’t much concrete proof,” Shumaker said.

Advocates at Lutheran, though, listened without asking her to prove anything, as the legal system and her abuser, separately, had. She got counseling, home security cameras and a friendly face to come to court with her from the organization.

Even years after the end of the relationship, Shumaker said her ex-partner continued to stalk, harass and intimidate her, including while she was helping clients at her social service job at the time.

Afraid for her life, Shumaker got a protection order and moved into transitional housing provided by the YWCA.

“I can honestly say if it wasn’t for services that I’ve received here at Lutheran or also through the YWCA, at best I would be on the streets,” Shumaker said. “And worst-case scenario – I don’t even want to think of that.”

Community-level victim advocates in Spokane serve thousands of people like Shumaker each year, but a new clause in a foundational federal grant program threatens to completely uproot their services, should the state not broadly support federal diversity, equity and inclusion and immigration laws.

On Aug. 19, Washington joined 19 states and Washington, D.C. in suing the Trump administration. The clause would block more than $1 billion allotted for victims of violent crime in the country, the lawsuit alleges. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said $34 million of this would be diverted from the state’s victim benefits and advocacy programs.

“This is really, I think, an unfortunate pattern of this administration,” Brown said.

Roshelle Cleland, advocacy and education director for the nonprofit Lutheran Community Services Northwest, said the complete loss of federal funds would put the organization’s victim advocacy program at immediate risk of closure, causing invoices for provided services to go unpaid and emergency funds to dry up.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, the intent of the new clause or the future of victim advocacy organizations that depend on federal funding to operate.

Washington would not be able to backfill the millions of dollars in loss for victim advocacy groups, Brown said. However, he anticipates winning the case against the Trump administration.

“The fact that we have to fight the federal government for money to protect victims is really sad, frankly,” he said, adding that Washington’s litigation has preserved around $14 billion federally threatened state funds over the last seven months. “So, hopefully that trend continues with this case, because I can’t really think of a more important and necessary resource for victims of crime.”

Neither can Shumaker.

“In short – and this might sound dramatic, but I truly don’t think this is a dramatic statement, but cutting funding to services like (Lutheran Community Services) and stuff, that literally could be costing lives.”

Part of the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, the threatened funds are made up of criminal fines, penalties and forfeited bonds from federal court cases. While grant amounts typically fluctuate from year to year, they have generally been on the decline since 2018, according to data from the Washington State Department of Commerce. For the past five years, the state has provided supplements to the dwindling funds. Currently, there are $20 million in total supplements, but as of now, there are no additional supplements in the budget after June 2026, commerce department spokeswoman Rachel Havercroft wrote in an email.

With more than 75% of their funding coming from government grants, the YWCA has already been feeling the impacts of the shift. CEO Jeanette Hauck said the emergency shelter and domestic violence helpline funds have taken a roughly $400,000 hit.

“The need hasn’t changed. The need is continuing to grow in our community as it relates to domestic violence,” Hauck said. “For example, historically we’ve had about 4,400 -4,500 helpline calls (per year) to our 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week helpline, and we are already on pace to probably be at 6,000 calls per year.”

In 2024, Spokane County had 1.6 times as many referrals for child abuse and 1.5 times as many documented domestic violence offenses as the state average, according to the Spokane Trends website.

Hauck said the Y served more than 18,000 clients in 2024. Since the funding cut, the YWCA has had to close three of six emergency apartment units and cut eight staff members – half left voluntarily, and the others were laid off.

“It really does put a heavy burden on all of our staff to do the work that’s needed, because we want to make sure that we can continue to serve anyone that calls the helpline,” Hauck said. “So we pay a lot of overtime, people’s workloads are heavier, longer than they normally were. So it’s – it’s a lot.”

Ultimately, Hauck said budget cuts are a matter of life or death.

“I think from a community standpoint, this decrease in funding not only impacts the YWCA, but these decreases impact everyone who is providing community services for people who are vulnerable,” Hauck said. “You’re losing the safety net for our community’s most vulnerable individuals, and when that happens, particularly when it relates to intimate partner violence, people die.”

A number of donors have stepped in to help support the YWCA where “government funding has left a gap,” Hauck said. She isn’t only referring to the direct federal cuts, though. About half of the $400,000 lost has been the result of reduced county funding, she said.

While noting that victim services help create a safer community for everyone, Spokane County Commissioner Chris Jordan said that the local criminal justice system already takes up around 70% of the county’s general expenses. Further, the county is looking at a $20 million deficit for next year. Jordan said one popular, county-run community grant got over $1.7 million in funding requests they were unable to fill this year, “and so I just mentioned that as one indication that there’s more needs than our federal funds are able to support right now.”

There are a number of county grants available for public services but, county Housing and Community Development Administrator George Dahl said, “There’s just not enough money to go around.” Fifteen applicants applied for $2.2 million in one county grant last year, Dahl said , but there was only $225,000 available for award.

The administrative cutback is hitting nonprofit providers particularly hard following the boom in funds the federal government distributed during the coronavirus pandemic, Dahl said.

In the face of funding uncertainty, victim advocacy groups like Lutheran Community Services and the YWCA’s domestic violence program have aimed to diversify their income sources, but for the Children’s Advocacy Center at Partners with Families and Children, that has not been enough.

The Children’s Advocacy Center provides collaborative, comprehensive responses to cases involving child abuse, center Director Stephanie Widhalm said. Due to their specialized accreditation, they serve kids from Eastern Washington to Western Montana. Its 11-person team typically serves more than 500 children and developmentally disabled adults per year, along with their nonoffending caregivers.

The center has around 50 different funders, CEO Carol Plischke said. The Victims of Crime Act funds make up only 26% of the budget, compared to the roughly 75% it does for other children’s centers in the state, Plischke said.

“That’s only because we’ve done such a good job fundraising, writing for grants, hiring a development director, doing all of those sorts of things which – should we have had to do? No,” she said. “The impact (of losing all funds from the Victims of Crime Act would) still be devastating, right? To have that 26% just magically disappear.”

Another roughly 25% of funds for the Children’s Advocacy Center are from other federal grants, making the program about 50% reliant on federal funding.

“Our funding for our Children’s Advocacy Center has been going down and backwards the last two years in a huge dip from 2024 to ’25, and projections for ’26 are even worse,” Plischke said. “Our expenses go up, and yet our funding is continuing to go down.”

She said that the center has a deficit budget of nearly $400,000 for this year, and that they are dipping into their reserves to make ends meet. They have closed Fridays, and left a nurse position open. With savings to last the rest of this year and part of next year, Plischke said that “if funding continued to go down, that would be a world of hurt.”

Plischke said that the center has worked to make ends meet by contracting its forensic interview services to Stevens and Ferry counties. However, she said, “ultimately, we can only do so much of that, and then more funding is needed.”

“To me, as far as to make some of that more stable, it really needs to be a blend and combination of federal and state. The state should, in my opinion, it would be really nice if we’re more of a budgeted amount, as opposed to having to beg for it every single year,” Plischke said, adding that county and city funds would be helpful as well. “That’s really hard to plan for and to budget when you just don’t know at all year to year if you have zero or if you have 50 million or what you have.”

Cleland, with Lutheran Community Services, said that every $100,000 budget cut means one less staff member for the organization. Managing a nearly $500,000 deficit currently, she said their 12-person team providing 24/7 crisis response could drop to only seven in the next six months without additional funding. She estimates that this would result in more than 1,100 survivors turned away.

Saying that victim services fall within the public safety umbrella, Cleland believes that the community should help fund nonprofits like Lutheran. In King County, a 0.1% sales tax hike earlier this year added a layer of stability for criminal justice, behavioral health and public safety.

“It is rare, and it has not happened in this community where victim services is included in bills or taxes that are public safety taxes that then go to fire and courts and police,” she said. “But yet, victim services aren’t included in that, but yet we respond with law enforcement.”

Betsy Wilkerson, the Spokane city council president, said the funding cuts to victim services were “not really on her radar” before Cleland reached out to her. Describing the conversation as educational, Wilkerson said some competitive city grants could fill some funding needs, but federal funds remain important.

“Victims should not be used this way just for political pawns. The money needs to come,” she said. “(Victims) have no control over this in their lives, and we know it’s needed.”

Moving forward, Wilkerson said her eyes have been opened to potentially weaving funding for victim advocates into community safety awards.

“I think with collaboration, I think we should be able to somehow find some funding,” she said. “Of course, I got to get six other people to agree with me on that.”

Today, Shumaker and her two cats – Liam and Cutie Pie – are getting ready to leave the transitional housing where she has stayed for nearly nine months, hiding from her violent ex-partner.

She is working on her second bachelor’s degree, this one in education to complement her first in human services with a focus on counseling, inspired by a teacher she had in high school.

“I am planning on transitioning from social services into education because I want to be that adult – one of those adults that kids that are literally going through hell need,” Shumaker said.

She recently wrote a book of “inspirational poetry” – “From Pain to Power to Purpose” – which touches on her experiences with domestic violence and how God has helped her “get through all this crap.”

Shumaker also trained to volunteer with Lutheran Community Services, now taking weekend shifts for the 24/7 crisis line. She plans to volunteer indefinitely.

“I find that really rewarding, because it’s a way I can give back, and I, like, truly, really get what a lot of people that are calling, wanting help are going through or have gone through,” she said. “I’m able to be that calm voice and sounding board for people. It helps me feel like everything I’ve gone through wasn’t for a waste. It wasn’t for nothing.”

Cleland said that “it feels like everything is a possibility.”

“I really hope that people understand that victims’ and survivors’ lives should not be a bargaining chip.”

Cannon Barnett can be reached at (509) 459-5167 or by email at cannonb@spokesman.com.