<p>Andy Sampson is known in his family as the go-to when they need a toy fixed. He recently fixed his son’s Nintendo Switch.</p>
<p>Sampson, in his mid-30s, grew up in South King County. He’s finishing a degree in data analytics and has recently left a job in countertop sales.</p>
<p>While things are good for him now, growing up he felt hopeless for his future.</p>
<p>He says that the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center helped him through his trauma and toward a future he didn’t know was a possibility.</p>
<p>From when Sampson was 2 until he was a preteen, he was sexually abused by his birth father and by other adult men. It wasn’t until his fifth-grade sex-ed class that he learned about consent and that he did not have to do things he didn’t want to.</p>
<p>“It was like, what do you mean? I don’t have to do something even if the adult tells me otherwise?” Sampson said.</p>
<p>In second grade, his teacher noticed something was wrong and brought this to the attention of his birth mother. Sampson said nothing was done about it. The second-grade teacher then tried going to Child Protective Services; however, Sampson said he remained in the same abusive situation until his preteens, when he was finally separated from his family.</p>
<p>Sampson said that as an adolescent he had no desire to create personal connections with people or get close to them because of what happened to him.</p>
<p>Sampson said the stress and trauma of his childhood were bottled up inside him. Even as an adult, Sampson had triggers that would transport him back to his childhood trauma. He would pass a man in the store who wore a cologne similar to his father’s, and he would freeze out of fear.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until he met his now-wife in his early 20s that he was able to get help, since she wanted to get married and have a child. Sampson was afraid that because of what happened to him as a child, he wouldn’t be a good father.</p>
<p>With the support of his wife, he was determined to get help through therapy. His previous experiences with therapists were negative. They told him they were not equipped to handle his trauma.</p>
<p>After going to a general therapist who was covered under his health insurance, he told them his story, “and the therapist just looks up from her paper and goes, Well, that’s expletive<strong> </strong>up. I don’t know what to do. I have no tools to be able to help you.’”</p>
<p>Another one incorrectly diagnosed him with ADHD. He didn’t blame the therapists he went to for their inability to help him since they did not have the resources to assist him in the way that he required.</p>
<p>His wife’s mother was a volunteer for the program now known as the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, and she recommended he try their services instead. The KCSARC offers a 24-hour resource line for those experiencing crises, plus legal advocacy, medical advocacy and clinical services like therapy, family support and prevention education. They also offer services in Spanish.</p>
<p>Love letters to survivors are posted in the reception area of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center in Renton, Jan. 3, 2025. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)</p>
<p>In 2023, the KCSARC assisted 4,805 survivors and their family members, with almost a third of their clients in Seattle and 46% in South King County. They served around 22% of clients from the east and north.</p>
<p>More than 80% of their clients identified as female, 17% were male and 1% identified as transgender, non-binary or other.</p>
<p>Sampson said the therapist that the KCSARC recommended was a man. Though he was uncomfortable around men since he was assaulted by a man, having a man for a therapist became part of his recovery through exposure therapy.</p>
<p>Another exercise he practiced with his therapist was to confront his trauma head-on: He would talk about what had happened to him, record it and listen to it. He reached the point where his trauma didn’t control him.</p>
<p>Sampson learned how to take care of himself, create care plans and use different tools. The assistance he received from the KCSARC was completely different from what general therapists do. He said general therapists can assist in different ways, for example through listening, but in his case he had to sort through deep trauma that stemmed from the sexual abuse he’d endured from his father and other adult men.</p>
<p>Sampson went through a year of therapy before he and his wife had a baby son, but now allows himself to enjoy fatherhood and being a prominent figure to all the children in his family. His child is now school-age.</p>
<p>While Sampson finished his therapy sessions at the KCSARC, he still uses the hot line whenever he needs a pick-me-up or as a form of self-care.</p>
<p>However, the federal Victims of Crime Act’s Crime Victims Fund has experienced significant funding decreases in recent years that could impact services offered. The funding is dependent on fines and penalties collected from prosecutions in federal cases, which can change from year to year. For the 2024 fiscal year, it is facing a <a href=”https://nnedv.org/resources-library/impacts-of-fy24-victims-of-crime-act-voca-cuts/”>$700 million cut (40%)</a> according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.</p>
<p>About 70% of the funding for Washington’s Office of Crime Victims Advocacy comes from the federal Victims of Crime Act Plan, and about 30% of KCSARC’s budget comes from state and federal funding.</p>
<p>For every $100,000 cut from the KCSARC’s budget, 70 victims or survivors won’t be served, said KCSARC CEO Kate Krug-Garvey in a Senate Law & Justice Committee <a href=”https://tvw.org/video/senate-law-justice-2024091182/?eventID=2024091182″>work session</a>.</p>
<p>Long wait times for calls, delays in reporting crimes and increased staff caseloads are some of the impacts of decreased funding in recent years, according to Megan Allen, director of advocacy at KCSARC.</p>
<p>“When we talk about sexual assault, oftentimes people hesitate to talk about it or to seek help, how isolated people feel in a different way than other crimes or experiences that people go through that are traumatic, so I do think we need to be especially intentional about ensuring that these services are available and accessible,” Allen said.</p>
<p>Their team has around 20 legal advocates, a manager and three supervisors, who take on 60 to 65 cases at any one time, from sexual assault and child abuse to domestic violence, trafficking and other violent crimes.</p>
<p>Legal advocates help their clients through the legal system, walking their clients through the processes of filing protection orders or reporting crimes and informing them about their rights.</p>
<p>“The reality is we may see victims and families have to wait longer to potentially get services or their advocate being unavailable for in-person appointments for accompaniment to reporting or to court,” Allen said.</p>
<p>Allen has worked at the KCSARC since the 2000s and as director for over a year, so she’s seen how cuts can impact meeting the needs of survivors and victims. She says further budget cuts would put a wrench in the workflow of teams who work together to match clients with the services they need.</p>
<p>The KCSARC receives referrals from their Resource Line or external partners. They also walk parents, children and other survivors and victims through legal processes with the courts, or through medical processes like what to expect during a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) exam.</p>
<p>“There are still times when our client care team is overloaded and trying to respond to several intakes and referrals that come in through a variety of different ways, which can be really difficult,” Allen said. “And you know, when you don’t respond to people in a timely way, it unfortunately sends a message that it’s unimportant, and that’s not a message we want to convey to victims and families who are trying to navigate the disclosure of their child’s sexual assault or the sexual assault they just experienced.”</p>
<p>Andy Sampson has volunteered with KCSARC’s Empowered Voices advocacy program since it began in 2017. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)</p>
<p>Andy Sampson said that although decreased funding could impact the services that helped him get to where he is now, he is hopeful that survivors and victims can get the help they need, and wants to continue fighting for survivors and victims in the state through engaging with state lawmakers and advocacy.</p>
<p>Sampson said the goal he is fighting for is that sexual assault never happens. “It would be lovely, but it’s maybe an impossible goal right now, but we can always keep pushing towards it.”</p>
<p><strong>Topics:</strong> <a href=”https://www.cascadepbs.org/crime” hreflang=”en”>Crime</a>, <a href=”https://www.cascadepbs.org/criminal-justice” hreflang=”en”>criminal justice</a>, <a href=”https://www.cascadepbs.org/law-justice” hreflang=”en”>Law & Justice</a></p>
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