Heinrich Calls for Inclusion of Victims of Child Abuse Act in NDAA
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) signed a letter to Senate and House leadership as well as the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, urging them to include their bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Victims of Child Abuse Act (VOCAA) as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (NDAA). The law, first enacted in 1990, provides the only dedicated source of funding for Children’s Advocacy Centers, which bring together teams of law enforcement, medical personnel, and service providers to ensure the best outcome for child victims and help hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes. VOCAA programs are set to expire next year unless Congress reauthorizes them.
Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) provide a skilled team of trained professionals to conduct forensic interviews of children who have been victims of abuse. Such interviews are intended to be used as evidence in court while also preventing children from having to relive their abuse and repeat their accounts multiple times. Children’s Advocacy Centers allow for faster criminal charging decisions in sexual abuse cases, increased felony prosecutions of child sexual abuse, and lower average case costs.
The lawmakers wrote: “VOCAA provides the only dedicated source of funding for CACs, which bring together teams of law enforcement, medical personnel, and social services providers to ensure the best outcome for child victims and help hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes. CACs are and essential law enforcement resource for local, state, and federal agencies. Each center prevents further victimization by ensuring that forensic interviews are comprehensive and meet age-appropriate needs of the child. Communities with a CAC have demonstrated increases in successful prosecutions of perpetrators, reductions in re-abuse rates for child victims, and improvements in access to medical and mental health care for victims of child abuse. One analysis found that the utilization of a CAC in a child abuse case cased over $1,000 per case on average.”
Senator Heinrich is a cosponsor of the Victims of Child Abuse Act (VOCAA) Reauthorization Act of 2022, which has garnered widespread support from law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police, National District Attorneys Association, National Association of Police Organizations, Major County Sheriffs of America, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and Sergeants Benevolent Association.
The bipartisan and bicameral letter was led by U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). A copy of the letter is available here.
The full text of the letter is below:
Dear Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, Leader McCarthy, Chair Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe, Chair Smith, and Ranking Member Rogers:
Thank you for your bipartisan work on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to ensure that the Department of Defense is adequately resourced and maintains its ability to advance U.S. national security and provide for our men and women in the military.
As you continue the conference process for the FY23 NDAA, we respectfully request that you include the Victims of Child Abuse Act (VOCAA) Reauthorization Act of 2022 in the reconciled bill. This legislation was incorporated in the House-passed NDAA, and it has both the merit and support to justify inclusion in the final package.
The VOCAA Reauthorization Act of 2022 would reauthorize VOCAA programming through FY29 and provide funding for Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) that serve child victims of violent crimes. VOCAA provides the only dedicated source of funding for CACs, which bring together teams of law enforcement, medical personnel, and social services providers to ensure the best outcome for child victims and help hold perpetrators responsible for their crimes. CACs are and essential law enforcement resource for local, state, and federal agencies. Each center prevents further victimization by ensuring that forensic interviews are comprehensive and meet age-appropriate needs of the child. Communities with a CAC have demonstrated increases in successful prosecutions of perpetrators, reductions in re-abuse rates for child victims, and improvements in access to medical and mental health care for victims of child abuse. One analysis found that the utilization of a CAC in a child abuse case cased over $1,000 per case on average.
There is substantial need for CACs and their services. The number of child victims served by CACs has more than tripled from 100,539 in 2000 to over 386,000 in 2021. Additionally, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ annual Child Maltreatment Report, there were approximately 3.145 million investigations into where a child was a victim of abuse and neglect, and an estimated 618,000 children were found to have been victimized. Unfortunately, these numbers suggest a gap of hundreds of thousands of cases of suspected abuse that need a CAC-conducted forensic interview. Moreover, there are many cases of substantiated abuse involving children who have either no access to a CAC or an inability to use the program because nearby CACs do not have capacity.
In recent years, military branches have utilized CACs and their services to assist military families. The FY21 NDAA required the Secretary of each bran to seek to enter a memorandum of understanding with the National Children’s Alliance (or similar organization) under which CACs and their services were made available to all installations. Furthermore, in FY22, $1 million was provided for a pilot program to support partnerships between military installations and CACs to support child abuse investigations.
Thank you again for your work to ensure that our military is able to continue to promote U.S. security and interests both at home and abroad. We appreciate your consideration of this request to foster and sustain this important programming.
Sincerely,
