By Becky Park, Executive Director, Conference on Crimes Against Women
Picture a woman calling a hotline at 2 a.m. because her partner has threatened to kill her if she leaves. The advocate who answers, the nurse who examines her injuries, the prosecutor who builds the case, the tribal shelter that takes her in — all of it is possible, in large part, because of a small federal office most Americans have never heard of: the Office on Violence Against Women, or OVW. The Office on Violence Against Women was established by Congress in 1995 to lead the nation’s efforts to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking through funding, training, and technical assistance. The Department of Justice now wants to fold OVW together with two other DOJ offices into one giant, generic grant bureau. That should worry anyone who cares about whether victims of abuse get help when they ask for it.
Every year at the Conference on Crimes Against Women, I meet the advocates, prosecutors, and forensic nurses who rely on OVW to do their jobs. Nearly 20 people are physically abused by an intimate partner every minute in this country — more than 10 million people a year. One in four women will experience severe violence from a partner in their lifetime. And this isn’t a problem that’s fading: the FBI’s most recent five-year analysis found that domestic violence made up a growing share of violent crime nationwide, with more than 11,000 domestic violence homicide victims recorded between 2020 and 2024 alone. On any given day, domestic violence hotlines across the country field tens of thousands of calls. Since OVW was created in 1995, it has put more than $10.5 billion behind the response to that crisis: funding shelters, rape crisis centers, legal advocates, police training, and the forensic exam protocols hospitals use to treat survivors with dignity and gather evidence that holds up in court. This is not an abstract bureaucracy. It is the reason a rural county has a trained forensic nurse on call, and the reason a tribal shelter can keep its doors open.
DOJ says merging these offices will save money and cut red tape. In practice, it would do the opposite. The people who currently decide which programs get funded understand the specific dynamics of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault, from why victims often can’t just “leave” to how strangulation cases get prosecuted. Fold that work into a general grantmaking bureau, and those decisions get made by people without that expertise, moving through more layers of approval. This isn’t hypothetical. Organizations working with the Department of Justice already report serious delays in grant funding caused by extra layers of political review, delays forcing some programs to lay off staff or cut services right now, before any merger has even taken effect.
It’s also not about saving money. A look at the Administration’s own budget numbers shows that OVW already runs leaner than the office it would be merged into, spending less than half as much on overhead. Because administrative costs come off the top of grant funding, more overhead means less money actually reaching shelters and survivors, not more efficiency.
And this move appears to be illegal. Congress didn’t leave this to chance. Twice, it passed laws saying explicitly that OVW must stand on its own within the Justice Department and that its director, not some new layer of management, has final say over its grants. Regardless of how DOJ wants to reorganize its org chart, it cannot overrule an act of Congress.
Tribal communities have the most to lose. Native women experience some of the highest rates of violence in the country, and federal law requires OVW to consult with tribal nations every year and keep a dedicated tribal affairs office. Weakening OVW risks weakening that promise too.
I’m not the only one saying this. The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, a coalition of national and tribal advocacy organizations that has worked on this issue for more than 25 years, has also come out against the plan, warning that it would violate federal law and undermine decades of bipartisan work to protect survivors. As the coalition put it, this is not “simply an internal DOJ reorganization.”
The need for a strong, independent OVW has never been clearer. Domestic violence is not going away; it’s climbing, and the people seeking safety today face challenges more complex than ever. A reorganization on paper would have real consequences in the field: slower funding, less specialized judgment, and a weaker federal response exactly when communities need urgency, not delay. DOJ should preserve OVW as the separate, statutorily protected office Congress created, not dilute the authority and focus that survivors are counting on.
Here’s What You Can Do About It.
You don’t need to be a policy expert or a survivor to weigh in — you need to say this matters. Email the Department of Justice at BJG.Feedback@usdoj.gov and tell them to drop this plan. Then call or write your Senators and Representatives (look them up at congress.gov) and ask them to oppose it publicly. If you’ve ever supported a shelter, volunteered with a crisis line, or believe survivors deserve a system built around their safety, your voice counts here. Congress already decided this office should stand alone. It’s up to all of us to make sure that decision holds.
