HARRISBURG — Rape crisis centers in Pennsylvania have been flat-funded for 6 of the past 10 budget cycles, a reality that administrators say is affecting their ability to serve victims and may lead them to cut services or reduce staff.
Now, as Gov. Josh Shapiro proposes keeping funding at the same level, the centers’ advocates hope they can convince lawmakers to change course before the budget deadline this summer.
This “flat-funding” is just one part of a “perfect storm” for rape crisis centers, said Joyce Lukima, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect, which distributes state funding and advocates for the centers.
Also hurting their bottom lines are inflation, recent reductions in federal funding, and lingering effects from last year’s long budget impasse, in which centers went months without state dollars, and some had to scale back services.
To help survivors, these centers provide support groups, counseling, legal aid, and crisis intervention hotlines. Lawmakers have increased funding for these centers three times since the 2016-17 budget cycle. In both 2019-20 and 2021-22, funding increased by roughly 10%. Last year, they got a 2% bump.
Christine Zaccarelli, CEO of the Crime Victims’ Center of Chester County, said monthly expenses like electricity and rent have gone up significantly since she started working there in late 2017.
“It’s common sense that things cost more now than in 2018,” Zaccarelli said. “To expect centers to be giving the same services now with funding from 2018, it sends a message that it wasn’t a priority.”
Beth Garrigan of Safe Berks, a “dual center” in Berks County that provides both domestic violence and sexual assault services, said last year’s state budget impasse left her organization on shaky ground.
While funding was frozen, the center depleted its savings, accessed a line of credit, implemented a hiring freeze, and ultimately laid off nine staff members — many of them direct service providers, including a therapist, a case manager, and two community educators.
“That was our boiling point moment,” Garrigan told Spotlight PA. “We had to sit down and really look at what funding we have and [ask], ‘How long can we sustain at the staffing levels that we're at?’”
Following Shapiro’s February budget address, PCAR and other survivor advocacy organizations released an open letter urging state leaders to approve a $12.5 million increase to the rape crisis line item in the upcoming budget — about double its current appropriation — to offset the years of flat-funding.
“This level of funding does not cover even a single monthly utility bill or therapy for one survivor,” the letter said of last year’s funding increase. “This is not enough to hire a full-time advocate, cover rising insurance premiums, or close service gaps.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Human Services did not comment on rape crisis centers’ demand to increase funding, instead saying that “Governor Shapiro and his Administration will continue to fight for survivors, and he looks forward to working with the legislature to support the Commonwealth’s rape crisis centers.” The spokesperson also pointed to last year’s budget increase for rape crisis centers.
That 2% increase amounted to about $250,000 in additional funding for all 47 centers in the state. Lukima said the boost wasn’t nearly enough to meet the centers’ needs.
“The legislators, the governor, everybody listens. Everyone says that our work is important, and then they tap us on the head and push us out the door, and don't do anything to recognize the critical situation we're in or to improve our situation right now,” Lukima said.
Doing more with less
In conversations with Spotlight PA, the directors of eight rape crisis centers repeatedly said one of their biggest concerns is paying their staff.
Zaccarelli, of the Chester County rape crisis center, said she hasn’t been able to regularly give her staff raises or cost-of-living adjustments. Last fiscal year, when two full-time staff members left — an advocate for survivors and a violence prevention educator — she said the center chose not to fill those positions so that it would be in a “better position to give folks a raise.”
“We’re not thinking about expanding,” Zaccarelli said. “I think the reality is that we’re going to have to make some hard decisions. Chester County is one of the most expensive places to live.”
Roughly 80% of the Chester County center’s $2 million budget comes from state and federal grants. But the government grants are aimed at a variety of services, not just those for sexual assault survivors. The organization also helps people navigate other parts of the criminal justice system, from working with juveniles to helping victims deal with court appearances. While money is still tight, that diversification means “we’re not in as dire of a situation” as some other centers, Zaccarelli said.
Other centers have been able to diversify their funding in other ways, sourcing support from private fundraising or grants.
But it can be especially difficult for rural communities to make up funding gaps, said Billie Jo Weyant, director of Citizens Against Physical, Sexual, and Emotional Abuse, which serves Elk and Cameron Counties.
State and federal dollars account for about 75% of CAPSEA’s budget, she said. But unlike urban and suburban counties, rural areas’ smaller populations and limited corporate donor bases leave them with fewer options to offset flat-funding or reductions in government spending.
“We’re going to be a call center,” Weyant said. “We aren’t going to have the funds to do anything but maybe answer a call.”
Ali Perrotto of the Sexual Assault Resource and Counseling Center, which serves Lebanon and Schuylkill Counties, told Spotlight PA that state and federal funding make up 90% of its budget.
At the start of 2025, cuts to federal funding began impacting the center’s research and violence prevention initiatives, Perrotto said. These cuts compounded longstanding declines in the pool of federal funds allocated to local rape crisis centers through the Victims of Crime Act.
She added changes to state law in recent years have “created an avalanche of service needs.” She pointed to a 2022 law on crime victims’ rights, which required law enforcement officers to tell victims about available services when they respond to incidents, which Perrotto said “expanded referrals from other systems to rely on us.”
That increased demand has put even more strain on a center that’s had to reduce the services it offers because of the lack of funding.
During last year’s budget impasse, Perrotto said, is when things became “dire.” Two temporary federal funding streams expired at the end of September. At the same time, one trauma therapist on staff left, and another reduced their hours to part-time. Perotto decided not to rehire those positions, and the center also consolidated its individual hotlines for each county it serves into one.
“We don’t know if we can realistically sustain services that we’ve traditionally had,” Perrotto said. “It reaches a breaking point, and where we see that is staff burning out and leaving.”
Andrea Hibbs, the executive director of the Crime Victims’ Center of Fayette County, said her center went into “panic mode” when the state’s budget impasse overlapped with the federal budget impasse last summer.
She said the flat-funding has had a “trickle-down effect.” Her organization has stopped replacing staff as positions are vacated, and the remaining employees have lost their health benefits. And now, Hibbs said, the center cannot afford a recent rent increase after a new landlord took over the office space.
“Not getting any type of increase in any of our funding again, it's just another year of, ‘What are we going to do?” Hibbs told Spotlight PA.
Pennsylvania’s overall spending on human services — which includes rape crisis centers — is generally the biggest driver of growth in the state budget. However, that growth comes more from costs like mandatory payments for federal programs than from services like rape crisis centers.
Payments for homelessness assistance, breast cancer screenings, and behavioral health services would also be flat-funded under Shapiro’s proposal.
The steadily rising human services bill contributes to the state’s ongoing structural deficit, in which it spends more than it collects in tax revenue.
Shapiro is proposing using roughly half of the state’s nearly $8 billion savings account to make up for the difference. State Senate Republicans have pushed back, saying his plan spends too much, but have acknowledged that “practically speaking, it's going to be a difficult task to not have any conversation about the rainy day fund.”