80,000-Penny Windfall To Violence Shelter Brings $47K More

RICHMOND, VA — The timing of a Virginia father’s decision to dump 80,000 pennies on his daughter’s lawn on her 18th birthday — a date that ended his legal obligation to pay child support — can rightly be described as fortuitous.

Avery Sanford and her mother donated the $800 to the Safe Harbor shelter, an act that will pay for 800 hours of counseling for the 1,500 women, men, children and human trafficking survivors who rely on the shelter as a path toward healing.

Or, it could be used to shelter a survivor with children for six nights, with about $50 to spare.

It won’t be quite enough to cover the $1,000 for a week’s shelter to someone who escaped human trafficking, but that’s what makes the timing of Sanford’s gift — and the flood of tens of thousands of dollars in donations it unleashed — “just one of those godsends,” said Safe Harbor’s director, Cathy Easter.

By Wednesday, at least $47,000 in donations as small as $5 and as large as $1,000 are giving Safe Harbor a windfall as it braces for a catastrophic funding blow that could cripple similar shelters across the country.

“We found out May 20 one of our largest federal grants is being cut significantly,” Easter told Patch. “To have this much coming in is going to help us continue.”

The hit to Safe Harbor will be about $440,000.

“All domestic and sexual violence agencies nationwide are facing cuts July 1,” Easter said, adding, “there’s no reason for this to have happened.”

What Happened To VOCA?

Here’s why:

The VOCA fund — as the grant program created by the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 is commonly called — is running out of money. The VOCA fund, administered by the Justice Department, is the main source of federal assistance for millions of victims of sexual and domestic abuse and assault, homicide and other violent crimes.

Unlike the previous five administrations in the years since VOCA was passed, the Trump administration did not earmark any of the federal criminal fines and penalties to the fund. Instead, the money went to the Treasury for general fund expenditures.

High-dollar settlements, such as the $4.3 billion fine against Volkswagen in its emissions scandal, kept the fund flush. As those declined during the Trump years, so did the VOCA fund balance — from a peak of $13.1 billion in 2017 to $4.4 billion in 2020.

• Related: Virginia Dad’s 80,000 Penny Child Support Dump: The Response Is Priceless

Not only that, white collar crime prosecution plummeted under Trump’s Justice Department. The pandemic slowed the court system; but during President Donald Trump’s first three years in office, the number of white defendants was down 26 percent to 36 percent from the average under President Barack Obama, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the Justice Department and Syracuse University.

And fines on corporations fell 76 percent from Obama’s last 20 months in office to Trump’s first 20 months in office, Duke University law professor Brandon Garrett told Bloomberg.

The House threw a financial lifeline in bipartisan 384-38 vote earlier this spring to earmark fines and penalties from deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements to the Crime Victims Fund instead of the Treasury, where they’re deposited as general revenue.

That would provide about $7.5 billion for VOCA grant funding over the coming decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The “VOCA fix act” still has to pass the Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein in sponsoring companion legislation.

‘Help Them Not Be Scared’

Those served by Safe Harbor have been beaten, raped, trafficked and had their lives threatened. They’re children whose innocence has been stolen. They’re often women, but men, too, who land in emergency rooms and need help getting out of a home before their spouse or partner kills them.

Their needs are vast and different. The psychological journey away from violence is complex, requiring not just one approach but often many.

“It’s really difficult,” Easter said. “Healing can come through counseling and services to help them understand it’s not their fault. Abuse can be physical, emotional, verbal — people don’t think verbal is as bad, but for children especially, if they think that is a normal relationship, they’re going to repeat that behavior.

“We have to help them not be scared,” she said. “Children’s counseling is so important to help children break that cycle of violence.”

Master’s-level social workers provide counseling to children, juveniles and adults. The shelter runs a network of safe houses and provides court advocacy services. And a program known as RHART, or Regional Hospital Accompaniment Response Team, sends staff and volunteers into hospital emergency rooms to support and advocate for people who have experienced domestic violence and sexual assault.

All of that costs money.

The windfall sparked by Sanford and her mother’s $800 gift won’t offset the full $440,000 Safe Harbor won’t get in VOCA funding. Like leaders of organizations across the country providing services to crime victims, Easter and her board of directors will have to reach farther into their communities for donations and seek alternative funding streams.

“We will not cut services for our clients — not when there’s so much demand for them,” she said.

Easter recognizes the irony in how the windfall came about.

“What they had to go through on their hands and knees to get those pennies off the ground,” she said of Sanford and her mother, “it was such a demeaning act.

“And to create something so beautiful that caught so many people’s attention and lifted their hearts, I just think is amazing. It’s absolutely incredible.”