SACRAMENTO — “I am a survivor of sexual and domestic violence. I was held hostage, beaten, raped, tortured and shot,” wrote Elvira Herrera of Southern California.
“If rape crisis centers didn’t exist, I would never have been able to tell my story. The staff at the rape crisis center lifted me from the ground where I was left to die,” she continued.
Herrera’s statement was included in a letter from women’s advocacy groups statewide. The group urged key legislators to shore up major gaps created by cuts in federal funding for support services to survivors of domestic violence and rape.
The groups rallied on the western steps of the state Capitol May 20, in the hopes that Governor Gavin Newsom’s May 14 budget revision would close the gap.
It did not. There was nothing in the budget allocated for domestic violence services.
“These programs are so essential,” said Krista Colon, executive director at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, one of the organizers of the rally held to voice concern for the budget cuts.
200 people from 20 women’s advocacy groups participated in the rally. The participants asked the legislature for $260 million in one-time funding in the 2025-26 budget.
“It’s a matter of public safety,” Colon said.
Photo: Becky Wolf
California receives funding through the federal Victims of Crime Act to provide essential services to survivors of crime, including survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
These funds help provide survivors with critical services like emergency shelter, counseling and financial assistance.
Over 800,000 survivors in California alone benefit from VOCA dollars.
Dwindling federal support for crime victims has been a source of concern for service providers in recent years. Without funded services, many survivors end up homeless.
In 2024, domestic violence support groups successfully pushed the state to meet a $200 million shortfall in the previous fiscal year’s budget.
“You are not alone,” Senator Susan Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, told participants at the rally.
She added that the trauma that survivors of domestic violence endure doesn’t “just go away. They need service providers to hold their hand.”
Photo: Viji Sundaram
A longtime legislative bill author for domestic violence programs, and a survivor herself, Rubio lifted participants’ spirits when she told them that SB 841, a bill she had introduced two months prior, had made it to the Senate Appropriations Committee with bipartisan support.
Her bill would prohibit employees of homeless shelters, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters and human trafficking shelters from allowing federal officials to access non-public areas of those facilities, except as required by state or federal law for immigration enforcement activity.
If passed, “immigration enforcement who show up at those facilities will have to have a valid ID and judicial warrant” before they are allowed in, said Grace Glaser, senior public affairs and policy manager at the nationwide sexual violence prevention coalition Valor, one of four co-sponsors of Rubio’s bill.
Glaser said there were two incidents in the past week where ICE officials were able to gain access to two domestic violence shelters in California.
Timely intervention by immigration attorneys kept any arrests from happening.
“At a time when we are seeing the federal administration attack immigrant communities, we want to ensure that all survivors — documented and undocumented — are able to access healing and supportive services,” she added.
Others who spoke at the rally included Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a Democrat representing Baldwin Park who chairs the Assembly Select Committee on Domestic Violence; Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat representing the San Fernando Valley; and Sandra Henriquez, Valor’s chief executive officer.
Henriquez reminded the participants that, faced with a funding shortfall last year, domestic violence advocates were able to convince state lawmakers to cough up their $200 million ask.
After the rally, many participants went to the offices of key lawmakers to request support for their funding request.
