University of Iowa transitions RVAP to DVIP

IOWA CITY — With federal funding cuts looming, and an expanded service region stretching far beyond campus, the University of Iowa in April announced it no longer will house the 51-year-old Rape Victim Advocacy Program and instead move the sexual assault survivor service under the auspices of Iowa City-based Domestic Violence Intervention Program.

But the public announcement was just the first in a long list of steps — and hurdles — to overcome in making the transition. For starters, the university had to lay off eight employees, and DVIP had to apply for the Iowa Attorney General sexual assault victim-assistance funds that had been designated for RVAP.

The domestic violence program — which for the last decade has served the same eight-county region as RVAP, including Johnson, Lee, Van Buren, Washington, Cedar, Des Moines, Henry and Iowa counties — then created an advisory board to outline goals for serving sexual violence victims, in addition to those experiencing domestic violence.

It also updated technology resources, like hotlines and websites, and started developing awareness campaigns around the changes and services still available.

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“We were approached by the University of Iowa about possibly taking on sexual assault services for a number of reasons,” Alta Medea, DVIP director of community engagement, told The Gazette. “And as a board and administrative team, our answer is always yes, we'll help victims. That's where our heart is — making sure victims in southeastern Iowa are served.”

As part of absorbing those services — with the goal of completing the transition by Sept. 30 — DVIP also got to work training existing staff, hiring eight to 10 more workers, and searching for a program director, which it now has found.

New program director announced

The Domestic Violence Intervention Program on Wednesday announced it has found its first program director for sexual assault services in Shell Feijo — an author, instructor, and trained victims advocate who’s listed as an adjunct faculty member at UI, where she earned a doctorate of interdisciplinary studies — specifically race, class, and gender.

Before graduate school, Feijo served as special projects coordinator at the North Carolina State University Women’s Center, which supports survivors across campus. She was a certified birth doula for years in the Iowa City area, where she also taught and led an anti-racist workshop.

“Shell is certified in trauma-informed care and considers the practice of trauma-informed care a vital part of effective support in working with survivors of violence,” according to DVIP’s announcement of her hire.

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“Survivors of sexual assault deserve comprehensive consistent trauma-informed services with trained advocates and safe spaces for healing,” Feijo said in a statement. “I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to provide this support under the mission and vision of DVIP/RVAP, and I look forward to engaging with the community in our eight counties around these issues.”

Once the transition is complete in the fall, DVIP will start providing sexual assault victim services for both adults and youth, including:

“We are meeting with key stakeholders, going over protocols that exist, that RVAP already had with some folks,” Medea said. “Seeing what successes they were having and what challenges they were having and how we can connect with more people better. How we can help victims get access to services easier.”

Funding total still unclear

Although the Attorney General’s Office last month granted DVIP the sexual assault service funding for which it applied, Medea said the exact total is unknown — given looming cuts to federal funding from the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA.

DVIP and other victim service programs in Iowa anticipate a 41 percent cut in VOCA funding for the 2025 budget year after the Trump administration in 2017 diverted funds away from the act’s “Crime Victims Fund” and into the general treasury.

VOCA — dating back 40 years to 1984 — was designed to fund victim services with criminal fines, forfeited bail, bonds, penalties and other special assessments collected into the victims fund. Due to the 2017 change and a drop in criminal cases through the pandemic, the fund is at an all-time low — depriving victim service agencies nationally.

Although a bipartisan measure to “fix” the 2017 VOCA change — and restore the victims fund — passed in 2021, losses for that period are reverberating and materializing in the form of cuts.

“What that looks like for the State of Iowa is pretty dramatic,” Medea said, reporting advocates asked state lawmakers for $10 million “to help fill that space.”

“That did not happen,” she said. “And across the state of Iowa, many programs are in a position of either having to cut services, reduce programming, or close altogether.”

Although UI officials said their decision to end oversight of RVAP wasn’t related to the VOCA cuts, grants made up 78 percent of RVAP’s $853,454 in revenue in 2023 and 71 percent of the projected $971,181 revenue in the 2024 budget year.

In both years, RVAP expenses outpaced revenue by more than $140,000 — while just 11 percent of its direct services and 7 percent of its crisis calls from July 2023 to March 2024 came from individuals with UI affiliation.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com