30 Years of the Violence Against Women Act: Endurance, Expansion, and the Next Era - 2024 NIJ Research Conference

DIRECTOR LA VIGNE: You guys crack me up. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the final day of the NIJ 2024 National Research Conference. Thanks to those of you who stuck around to the end. Trust me, you will not be disappointed. We have a great program today. But before I introduce our plenary, I just want to reflect on yesterday. I was so engaged. I had a really hard time skipping around from one room to the next because I just get absorbed.

And I know you were too. I saw all the interactions and all the energy, and particularly I don't know how many of you went to the poster session, but it was jampacked and there was so much engagement, and I lost track of time. And I actually stayed over the time. And a grad student was stuck talking to me. But it was so cool to see this array of research and to know that almost six out of 10 of those poster presenters are graduate students. They are our future, and it makes me so hopeful! So I don't want to spend too much time up here. I do want to mention something that you may have heard me say before. Okay. I'm going to ask you to look to your left and look to your right. One of you and only one on average has filled out your assessments.

[ Laughter ]

It's true. We are keeping a running tally and we have a 35% response rate. People, this is a research conference. What is going on here? Do we not know the importance of getting a good response rate? I am counting on all of you. You don't have to do it right on the spot, but if you don't, you could forget and then I would have to keep nagging you and I don't like that. So please give us the feedback we need to make the next conference even better.

Now I would like to introduce this plenary panel. It is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act. All of the panelist will be introduced, but I do want to acknowledge that I have DOJ colleagues up here that are very valued and have taken time with their busy schedules to come and be with you here today. And I also want to acknowledge the non-DOJ partner on the panel, Karma Cottman who arrived here late last night. These are very busy, important, brilliant women, and I can't wait for you to hear what they have to share with you. So we are going to watch a video while they come up on the stage.

[ Video playing ]

>>: 30 years ago the Violence Against Women Act championed by President Joe Biden when he was center — senator was signed into law, and since then the act has been reauthorized four times with updates addressing gaps in services, needs of victims, new innovations.

>>: So one of the great legacies of this law is that it didn't just change the rules. It changed our culture.

>>: In the past three decades over $9 billion in VAWA funding has been granted to rural, urban, suburban, and tribal communities and these funds have helped address and improve domestic violence, dating violence, and stocking while also supporting essential community responses and tens of millions of dollars have been invested in research and evaluation to guide prevention programs and service delivery. VAWA opens doors in communities across the nation. This is where survivors can go for housing, representation in court, or an advocate to help them with their safety and other needs.

>>: With each VAWA reauthorization research and forming what works, what can be enhanced, and where barriers remain can chart the course toward preventing gender-based violence in our nation's communities.

JANINE ZWEIG: Good morning. This morning we want to reflect on the past 30 years. This is since the Violence Against Women Act was passed. This is tremendous on the how the Act has had on our culture and millions of women's and families across United States. I started my career as an advocate, and I worked at a local violence shelter and rate price and service provider where we were struggling to meet the needs of the survivors that we were serving. I didn't turn to research to try to understand if what we were doing was helping people feel safer, be safer, and be well. The Violence Against Women Act or VAWA provided the foundation to my life's work, and it has profoundly impacted policy, practice, research for the past 30 years. I am so very honored to be introducing this truly impressive panel of women who each have been pioneers and have brought much dedication and labor to the gender-based violence field for decades. I will not cover their whole stories now, and I encourage you to look up and read more about them if you are not already familiar with the contributions. Each will spend a bit of time reflecting on their experience over the last 30 years with VAWA and then we will engage in some conversation. First, Dr. Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Science will present a little bit about VAWA. She's a senior science advisor in the office of the Director at the National Institute of just his. And Rosie Hidalgo is currently the Director of the office on violence against women. And Kris Rose is currently the Director for Office for Victims of Crime and Karma Cottman is Chief Executive Officer of the National Center of violence against women in the Black community. At this time I by Dr. Angela Moore to the podium.

[ Applause ]

ANGELA MOORE: Good morning, everyone. And it doesn't matter what I do because I can't see you. I am just going to provide a little bit of context about the before, 30 years a policy, programs, and research.

So what is VAWA and what did it do? The before of 1994 addressed gender-based violence to with enhanced criminal legal response. As you can see from this slide, VAWA was reauthorized four times since its original message in 2000, 2005, 2013, and last was 2022. VAWA aimed to reduce and prevent violence, increase accountability for criminal behavior, and improve safety and well-being of victims.

On this slide I just will provide an overview of some of the policies that were passed with each authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. These different statutes and policies, you know, they have been designed to address specific things, certainly one I will call out in 1994 was the pro arrest stance of. And we will come back to that a little bit in my brief remarks. Full facing credit. Finally, women who were receiving protection orders in one jurisdiction, they would have that order recognized and enforced in another. In 2000 we see more provisions and greater relief, if you will, for immigrant women in particular. We also see expansion for victims of human trafficking.

So with each reauthorization VAWA recognized there were gaps. So it is like when you address one particular issue, one challenge, you realize who is being left out still. And so there was more work to be done. We see full facing credit for juveniles. We certainly can't forget about young people because Wiki is if we can do intervention and prevention with them, then maybe we can lessen this problem for adult women, and also men and others. We see in 2005 more expansion. We see more protections for children. And looking at DNA. We talked about that. We had a session regarding DNA and forensics and also the importance of expungement of records. Protection for American Indian and Alaska Native women in 2013 expanded cyber stalking and then a host more of policies that were implemented for 2022.

The importance of providing enhanced jurisdiction for tribal communities, being able to deal with offenses that occur on the plans, so important.

And again, I just selected a few that were passed with each authorization and reauthorization of VAWA. There is so much more. And I'm happy to provide that information on demand. With the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, also came the Violence Against Women Act and I'm happy to say that I have been able to partner with the Violence Against Women Act and the Office of Violence Against Women since their inception. I was only like 10 at the time.

[ Laughter ]

And it has been a fabulous partnership. With each passage of VAWA came programs because policies, usually lead to program development and peace have an answer the charge. And there was a host of programs that they implemented with each one addressing the different legislation and the different needs as a result of VAWA. So I'm not going to mention those. Perhaps Rosie will talk a little bit about those in her remarks. These programs would expand, contract, change as they recognize the needs in the field. Currently, and Rosie can correct me if I'm wrong because I got this from the website, currently they have 16 discretionary programs, four formula grant programs that legislation will specify how those funds are to be distributed at the state level and the like, and they also have a technical assistance program.

With the passage of VAWA, and that is where we come in, there was a mandate for us at NIJ to engage in violence against women research. Now NIJ had been doing the research related to violence against women before the passage of VAWA. We had been doing research since the 70s and no, I was not at NIJ at that time. But VAWA 1994 directed NIJ to develop a research agenda on violence against women. And so when we need to do work like that, who do we call on? The National Academy of Sciences. And they produced understanding violence against women in 1996, similar work that help to guide NIJ's research in this area. Then with the expansion of VAWA and reauthorization within developed an enhanced agenda produced by the National academies of support us.

Just to mention one of the things that came out of our work is an ask, which we quickly sprinkle. asically, we are asking for money to fund our program, whatever that program is. During the process we were able to get funds for our violence against women research. Those funds ranged from a high of 7 million, the lean years, 1 million and now is round 2 million each year.

And so what did we do with all of that money? This is just to give you a sense of the areas we covered, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, other types of violence in the family related to violence against women and intimate partners, teen dating violence, elder abuse, and during this time we have been able to devote over $150 million to this work. And that is the testament to having dedicated funds for a research program. So NIJ has contributed substantially to this work in this area. But we recognize there certainly is much more to be done. And so we are looking forward to our discussion, and what lies ahead as we look to the next era as it relates to violence against women research and evaluation. Thank you. This time I would like to call Rosie up to the podium.

[ Applause ]

ROSIE HIDALGO: Good morning. It is great to see you all here. Obviously, the dedicated folks here on the third day of the conference early in the morning. And so we are just really happy to have this chance to engage in this dialogue with you. irst of all, I really want to thank Nancy La Vigne. They warned me that these lights were blinding. But nonetheless thank you, Nancy for your tremendous leadership. We really strengthen the collaboration in the Office of Violence Against Women and with NIJ and talking I guess maybe you're in, we were talking about the upcoming 30th anniversary of VAWA. And Nancy said let's have a plenary and really lift up how crucial research has been to the development of this policy and the practices and vice versa, how we want to continue to partner with all of you to really move forward with this next decade and continue to enhance the research, evaluation, the learning that we can do together to advance these critical goals. Is so thanks so much also to my co-panelist here and many others who have been a part of this. nd it is also such an honor to just reflect on how many dedicated individuals have gotten us to this point. ust last week we gathered in Washington, and we had a summit with our national training and TA providers. OVW funds over 100 different national and training and technical assistance projects with over 80 national organizations, many of them relying on this critical research and their partnerships with all of you to be able to provide the training and technical assistance not only to our grantees, but to non-grantees all over the country. And Ujima is one of the national partners. e did a summit of stakeholders the card and a lot of national survivors, advocates, researchers, practitioners for just robust discussions, and we had a research breakout panel that was also very informative. And that we culminated on Friday and the actual date of this past Friday September 13 of the actual anniversary of VAWA with an event at Main Justice, which our Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco led a fireside chat with some of the regional folks in the Senate Judiciary Committee who helped write this legislation 30 years ago. nd she was one year out of college at the time and that was her job at the Senate Judiciary committee. And she was talking about that that very rarely do people shine a light talk about intimate partner violence and sexual assault, certainly not in Congress as early not for the whole public to here. This was a private matter, and something better swept under the rug, and what was so revolutionary was this concept that no, we needed to lift up the voices of survivors, have their stories, their lived experiences inform, inform the development of legislation, policies, programs, guide the way in research and so as we have a chat, Lisa Monaco shared how her task was to start calling the shelters and reach out and find survivors. hey held the convenings all over the country and published a report called 'A Week In the Life of Women In United States' that brought to light this critical issue and certainly Angela, as you mentioned, some research already had been going on, and that was important part of this building that momentum and bring that research light and continue to advance this work for. And the progress we have been making with VAWA I mean, I think, it is so significant about VAWA that it is up for reauthorization technically every five years. nd where that happens, all of us, I'm not been there in the trenches like with all of you with VAWA and oh, my goodness it is time to reauthorize, but no one ever says no, we got this, we are doing great, we solved everything you know just reauthorize. But no, it is an opportunity where we gather and there is more than 20 communities nationally over the country reaching out to say what is working well, how do we scale it up, how do we enhance it. And we say what are the gaps and the barriers, and that is so crucial to keep identifying because as Angela noted, each reauthorization of VAWA is seeking to address those gaps and barriers and go further, go further in pathways so that everyone can access safety and justice and healing and well-being and to improve prevention efforts as well. So good research and evaluation is so important and survivor stories and the lived experiences of those of community and advocates to inform that work. And as was noted, it is not a one-size-fits-all approach by any stretch of the imagination. That is why there's been such an intentional effort to say how do we look at the ways that additional barriers to safety and well-being impact the community's particularly historically marginalized or underserved populations and make sure that we are addressing that, but also addressing it from a strength-based approach. s not just doing prevalence.

It's the prevalence is helped us see the disproportionally impacted, but then what? How do we continue to develop programs from a strength-based approach, putting tools and resources in the hands of community, but actually have a community informed that in the first place? Because those closest to the problems are closest to the solution. So that is also led to the evolution of VAWA each time. And want to give an example for my own work in 30 years both originally doing direct legal services were, they do a policy advocacy, working with national organizations, doing the training TA, and being on the Hill try to talk to policymakers about this and do these reauthorization's. A really good example of how all this came together was with the tribal, special tribal jurisdiction provisions that were added in 2013. And so we heard from tribal leaders. And it was their leadership and women in that space who were sharing the stories of American Indian, Alaska Native women experiencing disproportionally high rates of intimate partner violence, sexual assault in Indian country and the fact that tribal courts did not have jurisdiction in Indian Country lead to a sense of impunity. So that was a way of understanding better what were some of the factors. But then NIJ funded, in collaboration with the CDC and the national intimate partner violence sexual violence survey, and oversampling of the community, of American Indian as a late of survivors and that really helped to shine a light, to complement the stories of survivors. hat helped us in going to the Hill and craft legislative proposals to address that. It was a huge challenge, but everyone stood together because that informed all of us what we needed to do to make sure all survivors get a pathway to healing.

At the time we knew we could only accomplish it for domestic violence do say they would be special tribal criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country, which tribal courts over non-Indian abusers in cases of domestic violence and dating violence, and then for OVW to fund that, fund tribal governments, fund the training and TA to get the authorization out there.

But now when VAWA was up for reauthorization in 2022, we do had further to go, but that we had data. ow we had data collected over the years of the impact he was having in the lives it was saving and the fact it had left out victims of sexual assault, sexual trapping, stalking, child abuse, but that we could go back to Congress as they look as having an impact, we were measuring the effectiveness and collected the data of the positive impact, but also the information of who is left out and what more we need to do. I am proud to say that collectively we were all in VAWA and 22 able to expend that. That is one example amongst many and same with immigrant survive (Back from the very first VAWA it was evident that there was survivors of intimate partner violence, victims married to US citizens and legal permanent residents who intentionally were keeping their spouse is undocumented because what better way of tool for power and control they do have a spouse undocumented and fearful without work authorization, and not able to get public benefits and housing.

So from the very first VAWA, and we gather with people last week who are telling stories where they said they gathered not just stories, but that they did surveys and talk to advocates and got the data that informed the policy of VAWA on the Hill that created crucial self-protection. But we see the way it is challenge. Sometimes people want to roll it back. We have to go further.

So again, it is that whole, how to say it, just this synergy, right? Synergy that we all need amongst survivors leading the way with their courage and leadership and shared their stories, advocates, researchers, practitioners, all of us together in the synergistic environment to keep seeing how we advance these goals and how we dance our nation's commitment to making sure we are doing all we can to prevent and address domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and other connected forms of gender-based violence.

In addition to the critical funding that goes to NIJ, at OVW and Angela, I do want to point out we are now at about 49 grant programs because our VAWA '22 created a lot of new grant programs as well because of all the information we are getting for the first time, restorative practices that we just launched. And we are launching an 8-million-dollar evaluation component of our restorative by the programs. New financial assistance, flexible financial assistance grants that also come from every research and information in the field of what is needed.

We have to get these programs reports to Congress on measuring effectiveness. There's a lot of evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence that we are able to bring forward to keep evolving in this direction. But we also realize that we can take 3% of our funding to fund research initiatives, research, and evaluation. And for a long time I will be honest with you folks like we will have the luxury of putting that money into research evaluation. Every research evaluation funded is one less legal services distance, wellness transitional housing program funded, one less campus sexual assault. ut we have to keep growing the pie. t can't be a zero-sum game because we do need both. We need to get the money out into the field, but we do need to keep also allocating resources for research and evaluation.

Starting in 2016 we launched OVW's research and evaluation initiative in partnership with NIJ with terminus guidance and collaboration. And we know since then have funded about 50 research and evaluation projects, approximately $21 million. Just last year we funded about $3. million. We are about to fund our new grants this year, and there will be another solicitation for fiscal year 2025. For the most part we are funding each year anywhere from 7 to 10 projects, about a half million each, and it really has been creative and innovative research and evaluation that is helping to form our work whether it is how flexible finance assistance is helping or cultural specific aspects of abusive partner intervention programs. Or one that we recently funded that I'm really excited about is looking at advocates. his work takes an intense toll on advocates, looking out for their economic well-being, how do we help them with their own financial and economic well-being, and thereby supporting them they too to better support survivor so there is a research and evaluation component underway. There is much more I would like to share, but I mostly want to extend deep gratitude for what this partnership has meant, for the progress we have made together, and to see how we can continue to chart this path in the next decade had. Thank you so much.

[ Applause ]

KRIS ROSE: Hi there everyone. I am Kris Rose, and I am the Director for the Office for Victims of Crime at the Department of Justice. I want to start out by thanking Nancy La Vigne, the Director of NIJ for having this panel, for leading NIJ in such an authentic and intentional way. She is a very dedicated and passionate advocate for research and evaluation, and it is such a pleasure to work with her. I also want to thank my Faneuil panelist and Rosie, congratulations on such an amazing week last week to commemorate the Violence Against Women Act.

[ Applause ]

So today when I want to focus on is how VAWA advanced what we know about untested sexual assault kits. o my federal career started at NIJ, and I was in outreach and dissemination specialist. And after that, I later joined OVW as their chief of staff. And then after that, I rejoined NIJ, but this time I was the Acting Director. And you know what that meant? That meant that I had a little bit of influence on what we were able to study. Well, when I was Acting Director, it was right around the same time the report came out, excuse me, from Human Rights Watch about they had done a big, investigated report they had tested, untested kits around the country.

First of all, for those of you who are not aware of a sexual assault kit is, it's a medical forensic exam really that takes place when a survivor presents at a hospital or at a clinic after they have been sexually assaulted. Their medical needs are taken care of and then evidence is collected so it can be used in a future trial or in the criminal justice process. And all of it is dependent upon the consent of the survivor to every step of that process. So the Human Rights Watch report showed that over 12,000 untested sexual assault guilds were found in the property rooms at the Los Angeles Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. And what they found was hundreds of those were where the suspect was not known, which is why it would've been a good idea to test those and put them into the national database called CODIS. Hundreds were more than 10 years old, so the statute of limitations had run out and then many more were within six months of the statute of limitations.

So this report brought a lot of obesity to the issue of untested sexual assault kits, and it really brought national outrage. And then more and more stories started coming out about jurisdictions around the country that had volumes of untested kits. One of those cities was Detroit. Using VAWA funding, the folks in Michigan were able to do a study of 400 random sample of 400 of those kits. They called it the 400 Project and they did that to be able to determine the nature of what was in the kit, what that Kit had to say, what kinds of cases were connected to the backlog there, and it just by testing this 400 kits, they were able to identify numerous serial rapists. So like many women at the time, I was outraged.

The question for me was how could this happen? How could this happen that women who were brave enough to go to a hospital, enter a sexual assault forensic exam, it not have their kit tested, put on a shelf, it wasn't investigated, it didn't go anywhere. How could this happen? So I wanted to figure out the root cause of this national disgrace, but I also wanted to find solutions. So I remember talking to lots of folks at NIJ saying how can I do this? How can I do this? So that is when I learned about action research. And action research, as many of you know, is a research method that simultaneously investigates an issue and is able to come up with solutions.

So in other words, as the name suggests, action research conducts research and takes action at the same time. I was in Heaven. I was like this is perfect. This is what we need to do. So we funded, we did a competitive solicitation. This is in 2011. And we ended up funding two grants, one in Houston, Texas and one in Detroit where they had large volumes of untested and submitted sexual assault kits.

The great Becky Campbell, Jessica Shaw were on the evaluation teams for Michigan State and Noël Busch-Armendariz and Sam Wells from Houston state where our wonderful evaluators. The purpose was to really study and assess the scope of the problem. But also to identify the underlying factors that led to the problem. They wanted to develop a plan for testing sexual assault kits and evaluate the efficacy of that plan. They also wanted to create victim notification protocols. So why is that important? Well, picture this. Picture being a victim of sexual assault. You never heard anything after you went to the hospital and had the rape kit done. You put it out of your mind. You blocked it out. It has been five years, 10 years, 20 years, and you get a phone call telling you that there has been a CODIS hit using the DNA from your sexual assault get. You didn't even know that your kit had not been tested. And it brings it all back. Survivors report that when they were notified about their kits finally being tested it brought them back to that moment of being sexually assaulted. It is very dramatic. So coming up and developing victim-centered, trauma-informed protocols for notifying survivors after a sexual assault kit has been tested is very, very important.

So we have learned a lot from this, these research projects in these two different jurisdictions. nd found some solutions along the way. nd one of them was in Houston, they developed a police squad just dedicated to investigating these cases. hey also hired a full-time justice advocate in Houston to work with police, to make sure the notifications were done in a trauma informed way and to make sure that there was coordination, and there was outreach to survivors.

Police were trained on the neurobiology of trauma and so were the prosecutors so they could better conduct interviews of the survivors. These jurisdictions dedicated prosecutors just to prosecuting these crimes. hey developed the protocols for victims and in Houston they actually created a hotline where survivors could call to get information about whether their kit had been tested. In Michigan they developed a tracking system called Track-Kit where they could track sexual assault kits throughout the system and not only the police could track it, but the survivor could track it, the advocate could track it and that is still going on today.

And we also learned about why, why did this happen. We learned that chronic understaffing and resource depletion and turned over and leadership and powerful positions had a lot to do with it police personnel acknowledged that they had been cutting corners in their investigations of sexual assault and that have become the norm. Police, we learned that the police had done minimal investigations, just minimal efforts around the sexual assault cases. And in both stakeholder interviews and the police reports themselves, we learn that law enforcement personnel expressed very negative, victim blaming beliefs about victims of sexual assault. We learned a lot. And those two research projects produced best practices around the country so that we could test kits, notify victims, make sure this does not happen, again. The Safer Act was passed as part of the 2013 VAWA authorization, and that act provided for the audit, analysis, and accounting for the amiss backlog of untested sexual assault gets around the country and directed that policies and practices be developed. And in 2015, the sexual assault kit initiative was announced by a Vice President by the name of Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and they announced it in 2005. $41 million to go to the testing of kits in the developing a protocols and practices. he program is now operated by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and it has led to the testing of kits so that jurisdictions and states, some of them have zero backlogs now. Omaha, Nebraska, zero backlogs. West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, South Carolina, zero backlogs.

[ Applause ]

And then in 2017, the Safer Report was released. A group of experts got together and put together all of these best practices that you can access on the NIJ website, Safer Report, and it has all kinds of information and has 35 essential recommendations for best practices, and it is a seminal report on how we can ensure that this travesty of justice does not happen again.

But what can't be forgotten, regardless of all of the advancements in science and technology is that behind every single sexual assault it there is a person whose life was tragically altered because of that assault. And they are the reason that we do this work. They are the reason that VAWA got passed in the first place and they are the reason that we will continue to do this work to ensure that all survivors of gender-based violence get the justice that they deserve no matter how they perceive that justice to be. Thank you so much.

[ Applause ]

KARMA COTTMAN:Hello. Good morning. Thank you for saying it back. You all should be impressed by these amazing speakers, but most importantly that we knew left from right and got on the stage correctly and in our right seats. y name is Advancing Justice Through Science

I am the CEO with Ujima, with the National Center for by the sickest women in the Black community. 'm really honored to be with you this morning and, especially honored to have joined Director La Vigne and appreciative of invitation and your leadership with NIJ, and with Ms. Moore, and all the directors, thank you for sharing those incredible remarks. And Ujima is a national organization focused on addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, community violence in the Black community, and we are actually a grant recipient through VAWA funds from both the Director, the office on violence against women and the Office for Victims of Crime. And I'm really excited to share this stage having also been really engrossed in the work of NIJ and having been able to be on a couple of different panels with Director La Vigne and really be informed about the work that you all are doing in community. Some eye rolled today is really to talk to you about VAWA and the importance of VAWA in communities and in communities of color and culturally specific activities. s of the work is really important to me personally and important to our organization as a culturally specific organization. And so I want to start with really talking about what Director Rose talked about and what others talked about with VAWA and what they talked about. And Director Hidalgo talked about how OVW supported numerous training and technical assistance.

In addition to that VAWA really brought in the framework of according to community response, which lifted up the work that needed to be done between systems and communities at the local level and the importance of that is that it really did shift the culture of the work and the culture of how we talk about domestic violence, sexual assault and the importance of that is as Director Hidalgo talked about, prior to VAWA, talk about or engaging in any work around violence against women was really seen as lifting the veil around private conversations, and what we saw with the ushering in of VAWA is the shift to ensure that systems were held accountable for their response of keeping survivors say. And that is critically important for communities, but also critically important for communities of color.

And the reason that that is important is because what we know about historical trauma, what we know about the ways that we engage with systems, because of over incarceration, because of the ways that we are represented in the criminal/legal system and having our voices at the table through the coordinated community response is critically important because it is said that the experiences of communities of color, the experience is a community must be engaged and must be counted we think about policies, will be think about practices, and will be think about the ways that survivors are engaged in systems.

And so ensuring that it meant that, in 2005, end of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, there was specific language around the closely specific approaches to addressing gender-based violence. And the rotor that was not easy. You know it was peppered with a couple of different challenges. And I bring that up because the reauthorization process of VAWA is equally as important as-is the actual language. And the importance of that is that you have advocates like me, advocates like Director Hidalgo, advocates like Director Rose, advocates like Angela who get to bring their experience from the government perspective along with those of us who are working in community to ensure that the act not only addresses those surface level issues, but also gets deep into what communities are experiencing on the ground.

it ensures that from a technical assistance provider perspective and from an advocacy perspective, we get to talk about what are survivors seeing in communities, what are survivors experiencing in communities, and how do we address unintended consequences? And we saw that approach with every reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. So what we see is this growth cycle of VAWA where it starts a very systems-based and then moves to ensure that it is community-based and that it moves to say what systems are we engaging. So of course we are looking at how law enforcement response. We've got to ensure that there was research engaged, we got to make sure they're things like housing, economic justice, restorative justice, we've ensure that Historically Black Colleges and Universities have services. We have to ensure that Hispanic serving colleges and universities have resources. We got to ensure that individuals and women living in tribes and indigenous women who have not had the kinds of supports and access to legal resources that, again, that VAWA is addressing each one of those pieces and all of our communities holistically.

And then we take it a step further, and we look at unintended consequences. With all of that what does it mean in terms of how we implement VAWA? So the partnerships between community-based organizations and all of our federal partners are incredibly important because the interpretation of the law is equally as important as what is written in the La.

And so really looking at how we address communities, how do the community show up, how do federal agencies engage community's to ensure that our voices are heard not only in the policy, but in the range of programming that is being implemented from those agencies.

VAWA also set the framework for federal language across-the-board around engaging communities of color as culturally specific partners. And you will hear me, anytime you or me talking, and talk about the importance of engaging culturally-specific organizations that are developed by, and for communities of color because, because it is critical — and I'm going to say this over and over again.

It is critical that we ensure that the lived experience of those individuals that have been marginalized, that have not had access to services, for whom systems don't work, who don't speak the same language, who don't have the same experiences, who are overrepresented but underserved by systems, it is critical that our voices are represented in the approaches to address gender-based violence and why? Why is because we know that we are more likely to be impacted by gender-based violence. We know that for Black women, we are six times more likely to be murdered as a result of gender-based violence. Those numbers are very similar in the native community. We know across-the-board that for communities of colors these issues are critically important, and they are matters of life and death.

And so this work is not just about some, and I think Director Rose, you said this. It is not just about the agencies. This is about individuals. This is about survivors. This is about saving lives. And so I just, excuse me, I cannot talk enough about why culturally specific organizations are important. So that turns to me for why are you important? Why is research important? Why is NIJ important? And why is it important that you do your work with communities and with culturally specific organizations? And it really brought me back to when I started the work, which like Angela I was probably 10 years old. And I was actually in college. So yes, young in college, in Florida. And I was in northern Florida and working with the Florida coalition against domestic violence but also working with a small domestic violence there in northern Florida. We have all these anecdotes about women of color not being able to equally access resources, right? That we have all kinds of shelters, but we knew that farm workers working in the central part of the state weren't accessing services. We knew that Black women throughout the state were not accessing services. We had these anecdotes, but we didn't have the research to back it up.

So we wanted to figure out how to develop research but had to be participatory, right? It had to community. It needed to be figured out how to do quantitative and qualitative research. So we did a series of needs assessments. We did listening sessions. And I tell you all it was difficult. We received death threats. We are people say this is not your role to talk about race, to talk about gender in our communities. This is not your role. And here you have this Black girl from DC going down in northern Florida doing all of this work, but what it framed for me was the importance of the partnerships.

Because in no way could we have developed all of those methodologies, could we have developed the tools to actually engage communities one, in a way that was authentic; two, in a way that was safe; but three, in a way that produce the information that we needed to create change. And we did that. Ago we had to do that in partnership with researchers all the way from inception to development to implementation.

So your roles are critically important and in ensuring that there is change at the community level. Your roles are quickly important and partners in this work and partnering with culturally specific, with community-based organizations to ensure that we are not just doing research that doesn't engage community, and we are not just doing research that isn't grounded in reality is. We are not just doing research for research sake. We are doing research that creates change. And we heard back from those communities was that the experience is were documented because of their experience is lived on.

Because we got to talk about their challenges. They can to talk about it in a safe way. They got to talk with individuals that they trusted, and they had a history with researchers coming into community and taking their information, and not bringing anything back. And this changed not only for us as service providers, not only for policymakers in knowing that these issues would arrive but change the perception of community.

Because community got to see this kind of partnership. And as we talk about how we did research moving forward, there was a trust that was built with community. Thank you so VAWA have done all of these things in terms of laying the groundwork around how we do research, how we engage community, and ensuring that survivors are at the core of all of that. And that survivors from every community are represented in all of our work. o I invite you as we are on the last day of this conference, and as Director La Vigne has so remarkably done with her work of engaging communities to partner with culturally specific organizations, to partner with community-based organizations to ensure that we are working together to create change. Now I must leave you with this last thing.

Because partner also means resource. So you can just say we're going to partner with these organizations, and we are not going to resource them. Being equal partners also means that we are going to share resources to ensure that our communities are represented. And I'm looking out, and I know you are committed to that, and I know that you are going to do it. But I can't thank you enough or not only being here, but for being engaged in this panel and having this discussion because I get to see every day how it changes lives. I get to see how survivors are saved. And I get to see how communities are represented. And so I appreciate all of you and I thank you for having me today.

[ Applause ]

JANINE ZWEIG: Thank you all very much for your remarks and providing that wonderful information a background that we all need to here to celebrate and lift up the Violence Against Women Act after 30 years. So I have a couple of questions for you all before we open it up to the floor that I would like you to reflect on. One of NIJ's priority is addressing racial equity in the criminal justice system and considering this priority in the last 30 years of practice and both research and practice. What do you think VAWA has influenced when it comes to raise equity both in terms of setbacks as well as advancements? And I'm going to ask Angela to remark first, and we will go from there. I know this is a priority you brought to NIJ.

ANGELA MOORE: Thank you for that question, Janine. I will start with the negative so we can end on a high note, right? So when I think about unintended consequences, one of the things that I learned from advocates and individuals and researchers in the field, and I always share this often. And this was from Oliver Williams. And we were having, I would go to different meetings because I was afforded the opportunity to meet and go out to different communities and one of the things that Oliver said as we were talking about research and looking at the numbers and all of that, he said, "Angela, I'm not so concerned about who is in the system. I'm concerned with who's not. And what that meant was we saw the disparity. We saw people of color being brought into the system as a result of VAWA. That was one of the unintended consequences, right? And we were endeavoring to keep women and children safe. But there was a cost to that.

Because VAWA started, and it was part of the violent crime control act and there was a reason it was included in that. But as a result, it took a very punitive stance, which resulted in many men of color being incarcerated that had an impact on families. And so I just kept thinking about that. What can we do? What can we do?

And so come to 2022. nd because now there are different options.

Because going around and being able to listen to survivors, they would say, because from a research lens, like okay, why are you still in the situation. And they quickly schooled me and said I am not looking to necessarily get away from this individual. I just want him to stop harming me. And so we needed to find a way to be able to help these men, and it was predominantly men at that time. Help them stop engaging in this behavior. This is while we were able to preserve families. I am so glad.

Because whenever we would bring up restorative practices people were like you are out of your mind. We are not using funds for that when we would say can we you some funds to do research to study men no. So I'm glad we do have this focus. I am so excited when Director La Vigne came in and said here are my priorities. And the racial equity lens I'm glad to fully implement that. That is what we need. We need these priorities. And they need to live on and be a part of all the research we do. And not just at NIJ with the field as a whole

[ Applause ]

KARMA COTTMAN: I really appreciate what you said about Dr. Williams, and he was in the system. And one of things, I think, think is challenging is when we talk about the experiences, particularly women and girls of color, whether we are talking about individuals who are historically marginalized or we are talk about immigrant, and those women who don't speak the same language or even LGBTQIA+, there is this assumption that we don't want law enforcement response. And what I hear from people is we want to be safe. We don't want to be murdered as a result of the act and we don't want to be arrested because there is an assumption because we are equally violent. And so this idea of how do we ensure that there is training. How do we ensure proper responses, and that the research looks beyond the numbers?

Because one of the other things we see is this confusion about communities of color being overrepresented in services and that somehow means that we are being served well. And the two things do not necessarily equate. As of the idea of making sure that we talk about what it means to be both overrepresented and underserved as a result of being over policed, as a result of being over surveilled, as a result of having systems being uninformed about cultural services. So even with means for Child welfare and others being overrepresented in our communities. I want to make sure also when we talk about research we talk about out as researchers you partner with communities to look beyond just what you see in the pages and black and white and what those stories are actually.

JANINE ZWEIG: Thank you. And so Karma talked a lot about research, inclusive research, which is another NIJ, that Director La Vigne brought to our work. In this field, the gender-based violence research and evaluation field, as Karma noted has really embraced those techniques for really long time. But they relate to another priority, which is trying to increase the uptake of evidence-based practices and the idea that if research is inclusive and practitioners and survivors are centered in that research that it would be more relevant and more applicable, and the results would be more applicable to what their needs are. And with that backtrack I am wondering, Rosie, if you can comment on some of the challenges that the service provider field faces in adopting and promoting evidence-based practices.

ROSIE HIDALGO:Great. Thank you so much. It is something that I would like to lift up here.

In addition to VAWA and also the Victims of Crime Act, VOCA, and OVC, as we look at issues, the President, by Executive Order, calling us to develop, for the first time ever, a US national plan to end gender-based violence.

[ Applause ]

Exactly. We never had that in the US. More than 80 countries around the world have national action plans. ou in women considered a promising practice. People say what is that the US have a national? So we are really pleased that I do this an administration and across our federal agencies we had more than 15 real agencies participate in a robust manner. e got input from more than 2000 stakeholders, lots of national organizations and stakeholders. If you cannot look at that now, can find it online.

Because as we are looking at the pillars, and the pillars also came from community, the first pillar is prevention. We all know that we need a lot more prevention. Why are you investing more and prevention? And to be honest with you there many other countries around the world investing in more prevention than we are.

But we do have some important prevention initiatives.

So again, we need more research on prevention, and we need to show the effectiveness, and we need to do this with communities so we can tell that story, and we get more of an uptake as well.

Because sometimes, and I know we've been there doing these repeats on the Hill to get more money for prevention, and they are like how do we know it works? Well, we do. But we need more that an opportunity to support community. Just yesterday I was in Chicago visiting an amazing program working with youth in communities where they told us 14 out of 19 of the young people were witnessing domestic violence in their homes in the wake it spills over to community violence and all the other repercussions.

So again, we know we need more research that can form that can scale it up, but what is interesting about the national plan, among the seven pillars, the seventh pillar in, and of itself is a focus on research. At the same time though we acknowledge that each of the pillars, one was focused on economic security and housing, the other on survivor-centered trauma-informed approaches, the other improving systems, the criminal/legal system, civil, the immigration system, another one on disaster preparedness and all the way impacts survivors. So all that being said, as we were writing each other the pillars, was that we need research and evidence to be updated for a lot of these. Up to be honest with you, some research is quite outdated. nd so we are working right now. e have launched an interagency research hub at NIJ and OVW and OJP and others along with the CDC, NIH, and others. ow do we do the BiMo scan with others figured out how we do more updated research because they would be more updates too if we are not citing some things that are outdated, but also building the gaps. And we also realize that at times, as Karma has well stated and Angela, the data, and the research. Sometimes people like we need to be using evidence-based practice, which people want to, but sometimes that money is not focused in communities in a way that represents their strengths, the risk factors, the protective factors, and really gives actionable research apartment to your point I think it would be a lot more uptake if the research projects are developed with community to begin with because he exactly when Karma was same. That we can feed it back into very actionable research that we can use both to improve the programs and policies, but to at the end of the day to really bring about the change that we all want to see.

So I commend that you and I want to see how we called some, and we can amplify their many mixed methodologies of research and that it OVW we are looking to support all about really not only evidence-based practice, but practice-based evidence and how do we capture that as well. Thank you.

JANINE ZWEIG: Thank you.

[ Applause ]

JANINE ZWEIG: So I want to ask one last lightening round question. want to invite a little bit of time for the audience to ask questions and I remind everybody microphones in the Arctic and so please approach the microphone. And if you are unable to raise your hand, one will be brought to you. ut the title of this plenary is 30 years of the Violence Against Women Act enduring, expansion in the next era. nd so in one minute or last, thinking to the next era, what are you thinking are the critical gaps in knowledge and research. And Kris, will you start us off?

KRIS ROSE: I would love to. I think we need to focus on how domestic violence, intimate partner violence and other crimes that cause serious trauma impact future crimes that occur. or example, we have learned that many of those who are committing mass violence, mass gun violence, have histories of domestic violence, we are learning that many women who have been — it's been determined that they committed suicide, that in fact, they didn't commit suicide. They had histories of being abused and those suicides were staged, they were actually murdered. There are so many different areas that I think we need to explore and see what the impact of violence against women is on future criminality and how we can identify those victims.

JANINE ZWEIG: Rosie, do you want to go next?

ROSIE HIDALGO: I think I will reiterate that I do think moving forward, prevention is something we really need to lift up and how we really calling and also those who can be part of the solution, really pulling in the whole of society approach as well. And I think part of it is we realize that sometimes people think there's a quick solution, a shelter, calling on one, pressing charges, but impact is very complex. It is a very complex and economic security is a huge part of it. So I think even research that lifts up the complexities and what we are realizing exactly as Armistead is we need a coordinated community response, which is a hallmark of VAWA, but what does that really look like and how can we get the kind of research and evidence that helps us more holistically address these issues.

JANINE ZWEIG: Karma, thoughts?

KARMA COTTMAN: Many thoughts. Well, first, I want to say we think about communities of color, I think we have not finished the work there. And sometimes addressing communities of color and others, he can feel like a fad or feel like we are just doing it just for the moment. Bet is to be centered in all of our work. So continuing to such of the voices of those that are living in the margins and most marginalized is critically important. think looking at the healing modalities for all survivors, what does healing really look like for survivors and how do we engage in protective factors? Prevention is critically important. We got to figure out not just how we are responding to gender-based violence, but how do we prevent gender-based violence. And then finally the importance of the National action plan and really look at gender-based violence and protection from gender-based violence as a human rights issue, not just as something that there are systems responses there.

[ Applause ]

ANGELA MOORE: I would just add to what the esteemed panel has said. e need to look at how technology is being used to facilitate gender-based violence, and also how we can use technology to address gender-based violence.

JANINE ZWEIG: Okay. Oak. irector La Vigne just cut me off.

[ Laughter ]

So I will finish with apologizing to the Arctic is that we don't have questions, but also thanking our panel for all the contributions this morning. Thank you.

[ Applause ]

DIRECTOR LA VIGNE:Thank you so much to these panelist. id not already say these brilliant, powerful women who have been advocating their entire professional lives through both their leadership and the research? Thank you so very much.

[ Applause ]

They have a lot to share and that is why we didn't have time for audience questions. So I am sorry about that.