Maggie Gambill’s hands move furiously, air currents swirling the smoke
from her cigarette, as she describes what it was like for her — a deaf
woman — to go through the process of medical exams and legal red-tape
after she was sexually assaulted nearly 30 years ago.

“The only person the medical team could find who knew sign language
was my brother,” Gambill, speaking through an interpreter, explained.
“I didn’t want him to know. I really didn’t want anyone in my family to
know. I was physically hurt, ashamed and embarrassed.”

At the time Gambill was assaulted by an extended family member there
were few resources for the “normal” survivors of violent or sexual
crimes, much less those survivors with a disability.

“It’s important that all people who are abused have someone to talk
to — someone impartial and knowledgeable who can offer advice without
judgment,” she said. “I would say that it is even more important for
victims who have a disability to have that.” She paused long enough to
extinguish the cigarette before smiling and adding, “I honestly didn’t
expect to see such a thing in my lifetime.”

The Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, which has led the
National Sexual Assault Coalition Resource Sharing Project since 2003,
was recently named the benefactor of a $400,000 federal grant from the
U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. The
monies will be used to provide structure for the Justice for Deaf
Victims National Coalition (JDVNC), an organization that has been in
existence in an informal way since 2000.

Although the main goal of the program will be to enhance and further
educate the already existing 18 JDVNC-related organizations throughout
the nation, leadership is hopeful that the grant will also lead to
expansion into additional geographical areas.

“One of the goals of the project will be to establish a national
data collection process so we can get solid numbers to back up the need
we know is there,” said Gretchen Waech, executive director of JDVNC.
“What I can tell you is that, statistically, persons with disabilities
are at least twice as likely to be victims of domestic or sexual
assault; when you consider that the statistics for the general
population are already incredibly high — one in three women is the
accepted statistic, although it varies — this is a mind-boggling
problem.”

In the grant proposal submitted to federal agencies, the deaf
community was highlighted as “a widely overlooked cultural minority
group.”

“Victim advocacy programs are not equipped to provide culturally
appropriate and linguistically accessible services to deaf survivors,”
Waech said. “At best, most programs will make a half-hearted effort to
find an interpreter for support groups or make sure their shelters are
physically accessible. This is not enough. Thus, deaf victims and
survivors rarely get the services they need to help them heal and move
on with their lives.”

Gambill knows firsthand about the system’s inability to work with her particular disability.

“Because my abuse was at the hands of a family member that had
nearly constant access to me, I moved into a facility for battered and
abused women,” she said. “It was nice enough — rather like living in a
dormitory. But, no one there spoke my language and I had a very limited
ability at that time to read lips. It was isolating. Although I
logically understood that I was there to be helped and out of concern
for my safety, the day-to-day reality is that I felt as if I was being
punished for what happened.”

The 18 JDVNC programs were formed with the goal of providing direct
services to deaf victims of domestic and sexual violence. However, only
10 currently provide direct service to victims using paid staff. Three
provide advocacy with volunteer staff. Of the remaining programs, some
provide a mix of community and mainstream provider education, and
others are unable to provide services at all.

With the newly established federal funds, which have come into the
state under the umbrella of the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault,
the JDVNC hopes to standardize curriculum for advanced training of
experienced deaf advocates, enhance training for new programs,
standardize training for mainstream providers (victim service programs,
law enforcement, medical personnel), establish a certification program
for advocates at a national level, centralize resources and information
for new and existing programs, and develop guidelines. Organizers had
been planning a national conference in October, but, due to the timing
of the grant, the event will not be held. Alternative dates for such an
event are currently under consideration.

“The broad focus of this three-year process will be building a
strong foundation for JDVNC at the federal level, focusing on
sustainability,” Waech said. “All of us involved in the project have a
goal of making sure this organization is around for the long haul; we
have a lot of dreams to accomplish.”

In addition to the grant that will fund a more structured advocacy
effort for deaf victims, the Office on Violence Against Women awarded
$1.3 million to the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault. This money
will aid the state’s leadership in the National Sexual Assault
Coalition Resource Sharing Project (RESHAP). While Iowa leads the
overall program, the state partners with the North Carolina Coalition
Against Sexual Assault and the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault
Programs to divide the nation into three geographical service regions
that each contain roughly 20 coalitions.

“[The grant] is for a continuation of the program that the Iowa
Coalition has been doing since 2003,” said Cat Fribley, RESHAP
coordinator. “It’s a national technical assistance project that
provides training, support, on-site visits, skill-building conference
calls and many other resources to the staff at all 54 state and
territorial sexual assault coalitions. Which, in turn, hopefully means
that there is a trickle down affect to the 1,350 rape crisis centers
that are across the nation and serve all victims of sexual violence.
It’s a way for us to provide up-to-date information, resource sharing
and training to those coalition staff who then go back and share that
information and those resources.”

Although not personally involved in the management of the new
program targeting deaf survivors, Fribley said she’s pleased the group
was given federal funds and that Iowa is spearheading the project.

“There has been an understanding and a shift in the last few years
that services from within culturally and linguistically specific
communities are more effective than an outreach model of a mainstream
rape crisis center, providing services as an outreach effort to that
community,” she said. “Services developed within that community are
more apt to better meet the needs of survivors.”

“It’s hard to consider the magnitude of the impact an advocacy
program like this would have had in my life,” Gambill said. “I don’t
think it would have taken any of the direct pain away, nor do I think
it would have smoothed everything over. I do think, however, that I
would not have wasted so much of my time trying to figure out why this
happened to me. I don’t think I would have blamed myself as much.”