Board to compensate Arkansas crime victims is slow, often unsympathetic, applicants say

Sarah Heer is shown in this Aug. 14, 2020, submitted photo. Heer turned to the Arkansas Crime Victims Reparations Board for help in 2016 after she was shot by her husband.
Sarah Heer is shown in this Aug. 14, 2020, submitted photo. Heer turned to the Arkansas Crime Victims Reparations Board for help in 2016 after she was shot by her husband.

A board made up of governor-appointed victim advocates has struggled to accomplish their goal of providing Arkansas crime victims with financial compensation because of a lack of money, even as some victims say that the long wait times and potential for renewed trauma make them wish they never sought the panel's help in the first place.

By law, the Arkansas Crime Victims Reparations Board can offer victims or their families up to $10,000 in compensation -- $25,000 in cases of extreme injury that cause disability -- that can go toward medical bills, therapy, funeral expenses or other damages.

But Sarah Heer, who was shot in the leg by her husband in September 2016 and suffered a broken femur, said that a couple months after applying to the board for aid, she got a letter in February 2017 offering her just $285.72 toward her medical bills.

Worse, Heer said, the letter said that the board's investigators had determined that "it appears that the degree of responsibility attributable to you by your actions justify a diminished reward."

The sum they offered her had been reduced by 75%, in accordance with Arkansas Code and the board's rules. Heer said the letter brought her to tears. She said she felt like they were blaming her for what her husband had done to her.

"I remember thinking, 'I wish I never even applied for this'," Heer said. "It made me feel worse than I did getting shot."

Heer appealed to the board, appearing in person -- after a wait of several more months. A detective who had worked on the case also gave an account. Heer said she was asked why she didn't run from her husband, and why she had even been there -- she was shot in her own house.

Heer's appeal was denied, and she said that the re-victimization and victim blaming that happened during her appeal beat her down, adding "additional pain on top of the physical."

The woman who referred Heer to the board for help in the first place, Jajuan Archer, would go on to be appointed to the board by Gov. Asa Hutchinson. But Archer said that, because of what happened to Heer and her own experiences on the board, she's stopped recommending to victims that they apply to the board for help.

In fact, Archer said, what happened to Heer when she went to the board "happens to a lot of people." She thinks that victims working with the board face an inappropriate amount of suspicion.

The board's chairperson, Janice Church, said she understands that some victims may feel slighted by their experiences with the board, but that the members do take a lot of care in their decision-making.

Church said she could not immediately recall the details of Heer's case, but acknowledged that the board's rules for determining how a crime could have been caused or aggravated by a victim's actions can rub people the wrong way.

"We do have to make some judgements -- and they are strictly judgements -- if someone's actions contributed to their victimization," Church said.

"[In] a domestic violence situation, normally we are a little more lenient," Church said, because "we understand the dynamics of domestic violence."

The board uses information submitted by the victim and gathered by the board's staff investigators to come to a decision, Church said.

"Our goal is not to make people feel re-victimized," Church said. "But does that happen? Oh, I feel sure."

Church is a child and adolescent psychologist at UAMS and works with victims and perpetrators of abuse, so she considers the board's mission of aiding victims "very much entwined with what I do."

The board was created in 1987, Church said, and she was nominated in 1998. She has served six 4-year terms and has been chairperson since 2008.

The board was initially under the attorney general's office, but at the end of 2019 was transferred to the control of the Arkansas Department of Public Safety.

Two of the five board members must be licensed to practice law in Arkansas, and at least one must be a victim of violent crime or the next of kin of a victim, according to the rules.

Archer gained firsthand experience with domestic violence when an ex-boyfriend held her at gunpoint in August 2011 and threatened to kill them both. It wasn't the first time he had pointed a gun at her, and Archer was only able to escape by shooting him and running for her life. He died of his injuries.

Archer made a claim with the board, hoping more than anything to get some help with mental health therapy. In the end, the board awarded her some money to clean her car, which had become a crime scene.

"I did not get the help that I needed," Archer said. "They paid for zero mental health therapy sessions."

When Archer was appointed to the board in February 2020, she said she was surprised to be working with some of the same board members and staff investigators who heard her claim nine years earlier.

Nevertheless, Archer said she wanted to join the board to get victims the help she hadn't been given. But she ended up facing what she called pushback.

For starters, she was concerned about some of the wording used in letters to victims. She had Heer's letter from 2017 as an example of how victim-blaming wording can hurt people, and as a survivor of domestic violence, she had some idea of how to improve on it.

"Is there any way we can change the language, just to help people not feel that we are victim blaming?" Archer said she asked herself.

Archer wanted to review examples of the form letters sent to victims, but said she was never able to get these from the staff. She said the board continues to communicate with victims in insensitive ways.

Additionally, Archer made a motion to impose term limits on board members, she said, but it got nowhere. Her reasoning is that some board members have been there for nearly two decades, and that attitudes toward violence and victims can change over the years.

Finally, Archer said she didn't always agree with the conclusions drawn by the board's staff investigators in their recommendations, but was told as soon as she joined the board that it "wouldn't be good," if she questioned the staff.

Church said that she doesn't think that asking the investigators to go back and take another look at the cases is within the responsibilities of the board, but did stress that the board is able to vote on its own decision regardless of what an investigator suggests.

"We do see it differently sometimes from the staff," Church said.

The board does not see every piece of evidence, instead working from a two- or three-page summary written by the staff, Church said. The members just don't usually have the time to get into those details, she said, and most don't have any investigative background anyway.

The problem with that, Archer said, is that board members don't always have all the information they need to know if the staff's recommendations are proper.

"For example," Archer said, "there were never dates on the claims paperwork -- not the date of the crime, not the date of appeal -- making it difficult to know how long the claimant had been waiting for aid, or how large their claim backlog was."

They also can't see how much money the victim is asking for, Archer said.

The lack of dates on paperwork was starting to be corrected when Archer left the board in December 2020, she said, which was a very basic step in the right direction.

To make the best choices and ensure victims aren't being treated improperly, Archer thinks that board members should have all the paperwork the staff investigators review, not just their written summaries, and, moreover, that the claimant should have copies of all of the paperwork that board members are using to evaluate the claims.

Victims don't typically get the full details of an investigator's findings, Church said, but should be able to request a detailed report from the staff.

But Heer said that just getting in touch with the people working on her case was nearly impossible, let alone getting detailed information about the process.

"There was never any getting a hold of anybody," Heer said.

All three of these problems -- the lack of dates on claims, the lack of the dollar amount of a victim's claim and the victim's inability to access paperwork crucial to deciding their case -- and others, were included in suggestions Archer made to Hutchinson when she ended her work with the board.

FUNDING CHALLENGES

There's one thing that Archer and Church agree on, though: the board is chronically short of money.

John Smith, the Department of Public Safety's chief financial officer, put it more bluntly. When the board was moved under his department, "they were basically broke."

The board gets money to award victims from three main sources -- restitution paid by convicted criminals, money from the state Administrative Office of the Courts and from federal Department of Justice grants through the Victims of Crime Act.

The first two sources provide varying income each year, Smith said, and have generally been on the decline.

Smith added that the courts intended to provide more than $1 million in the 2020 fiscal year, but fell short.

Smith, who has worked 31 years for the state, said he's not sure exactly why the courts' funding has declined. Other state agencies, including the Arkansas Crime Laboratory where he previously worked, have felt the squeeze, too.

"They've either spent or obligated more than is coming in, or they're not collecting as much," Smith said.

Federal money must go toward paying claims and cannot be used for operating costs and salaries.

The board awarded victims $1,605,822 in the 2020 fiscal year and $1,535,791 -- more than its income from all three revenue sources that year -- in the 2021 fiscal year, Smith said.

The board spends as little as possible on operating costs, Smith said. It reported spending $418,550 in the 2020 fiscal year and $293,524 in the 2021 fiscal year for operating costs.

The restricted operating costs are not without their own strains, though, and Church said the board has struggled because it has fewer investigators than it used to.

The board has gotten two one-time payments in recent years to keep its coffers from running dry, Smith said. A $2.1 million dollar payment from Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's office in the 2020 fiscal year was quickly spent. And in July 2021 Hutchinson gave the board another $2 million from his reserve.

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The Hutchinson payment was crucial because the board had been unable to award some of the valid claims made in 2020.

"There were several months where we didn't make any payouts because there weren't any funds to be had," Church said.

Church stressed that the board does not and will not reduce the amount of money that is due a victim because of its own financial situation.

"We've gotten out and begged and pleaded," Church said. "We would not have ever reduced an award because of lack of funds. That would go totally against the grain of the board's whole principles."

The inability to pay claims in 2020 delayed a process that Church admits can already take quite some time, especially if a victim appeals a decision, as Heer chose to do.

"I wish we could say we get the application and vote on it in the next days or weeks," Church said. "But that's not always the case."

RECENT CASE

In the board's March meeting, members heard claims mainly from August, September and October of last year, Church said. The board has "always had a bit of a backlog," she said.

Archer said the board's backlog was often longer by months than Church says, especially during the first year or so of the covid-19 pandemic, when so much had to be done virtually.

Because of the slow process, the board hasn't yet heard a claim from Heather Baker, president and publisher of About You magazine.

Baker and her boyfriend, Ryan Parker, were shot at in what police think was a failed carjacking in Little Rock's Heights neighborhood Nov. 12. Their car was totaled, and received several bullet strikes, but neither Baker nor Parker was badly injured.

Baker said she turned to the board primarily seeking financial aid for her and Parker's therapy dealing with trauma caused by the shooting.

Baker was not satisfied with the slow pace at which the board's investigators were processing her case and contacted Rutledge. That prompted investigators to give her an update, Baker said, but she has had little contact since then, and she knows most crime victims don't have those kind of connections to call on.

"I would hate to think that the attorney general needs to get in touch to get the staff to step up on their work," Church said.

In the meantime, Baker has paid for months of therapy sessions, which is something she said she knows other victims might not be financially able to do.

The trauma caused by the incident, measured in anxiety and dread rather than bullet wounds and stitches, is incredibly taxing, Baker said.

"There has to be a way to get therapy for people quicker, because that's going to be how you stop people from falling apart," Baker said.

Baker suggested that the board could offer the services of a selection of pre-approved therapy offices for victims while their cases are deliberated.

Baker said that since what happened to her, state legislators including Sen. Kim Hammer have approached her with an interest in improving how quickly the board can get help to victims.

Hammer said he wasn't very familiar with the board's work until hearing about Baker's experience, and said he hopes to form a legislative committee to review board policies and see if there is a way to expand access to counseling for victims.

Hammer wondered if the all-volunteer nature of the board, combined with a rise in the crime rate, makes it impossible for it to keep up with the need.

"Are we asking them to do an insurmountable job?" Hammer asked.

On top of the board's slow response time, Baker thinks that the limit imposed on mental health payments is ridiculous. Of the possible $10,000 award, the amount that can go to mental health treatment is capped at $2,500, according to board rules.

Church agrees that the $2,500 limit is often inadequate, she said, but pointed out that victims can submit a treatment plan showing that the care is directly related to the trauma from the crime and have the limit raised.

"Nobody gets penalized because they need more sessions," Church said.

Archer disagreed, however, citing her time on the board when she saw victims try to get financial extensions for mental health care.

"It's going to be hard capped at that $2,500," Archer said.

Frustrated with the state's program to help victims of violence, Archer in 2012 founded her own victims service provider, Women's Own Worth, a nonprofit that aims to provide emotional and financial support, therapy and even temporary housing to victims of violence.

Providing therapy is a priority for Archer as a victims advocate, saying she was crushed that the board made it so difficult for people to get help.

"Mental health therapy is just as important or more important" than paying medical bills or funeral costs, Archer said. "We need to take care of the living."

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NEW MONEY

Going forward, Church said she is hopeful that Hutchinson's recent decision to provide the board $2.3 million every year from the state's regular budget will help solve the board's money issues.

The payment, which will first hit July 1, is a blessing, said Smith, the chief financial officer. The board will also get $1.1 million from the Department of Justice's grant this year, he said, and will be able to start spending that money this month.

Church cautioned, however, that with other state funding drying up, the board may still have some slim years ahead.

"[The board] isn't just going to get money coming out of its ears from a bunch of different sources," Church said.

In particular, Church said, she's concerned by the number of claims filed by victims of sexual abuse, often children, which she said has increased "tremendously." These claims are absolutely worthy of compensation, she said, but the board already struggles awarding deserving claims.

What some victims have a hard time understanding, Church said, is that the board is, and always has been, a recourse for victims who don't have any money coming their way from restitution or insurance and simply can't afford to pay for medical bills or a funeral. The reparation payment is an attempt by the state to keep them from being re-victimized by the system, she said.

"This wasn't designed to be the be-all and end-all for all expenses. It's meant to be a token," Church said.

Despite the negative experiences she and others have had with the board, Archer hopes that the attention Baker has called to the often-frustrating practices of the board, as well as the renewed support from the governor, will pave the way toward a process that is faster and more victim-oriented.

"I have hope that it's going to be better," Archer said

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