With funding cut, families of homicide victims will lose emotional, legal, financial support

There's no playbook when it comes to losing a loved one to murder. No one expects it to happen to them, and no one knows what to do when it does. That is where the North Carolina Victim Assistance Network (NC VAN) comes in.

NC VAN started in 1986 and serves about 800 people per year. The group offers grief counseling, support through the court process and financial help.

But a loss of federal funding – a cut of 57 percent over the past five years – means more families are left without that support.

Through the federal budget, Congress funds the Victims of Crime Act or VOCA, determining how much each state gets. For North Carolina, that amount has dropped from $103 million in 2018 to $44 million in 2023.

The Governor's Crime Commission distributes the federal money, including to NC VAN, every two years, most recently at an average of $600,000 to $800,000. NC VAN's annual $550,000 budget is made up of that distribution plus money from other sources like grants.

For 2023, NC VAN was told they'd get nothing from the Governor's Crime Commission; a grant of $400,000 will fund victims' services only through October.

"If we don't secure funding for after September of 2023, then we just go away. I mean, our services will not exist," said NC VAN Executive Director Frances Battle.

The cut leaves families like those of the five victims of the mass shooting in the east Raleigh Hedingham neighborhood in October without support.

After that event, NC VAN Associate Director Elizabeth Watson, said, "We were called in right away. We were seen as the only group that would really know how to support the surviving loved ones."

Shelley Puryear knows what that means. When her daughter, Britny, was murdered by her boyfriend in 2014 in Fuquay-Varina, she had no idea where to turn.

"I received a phone call. It was the worst phone call I ever received. I can honestly tell you that I fell onto my knees on the floor in my kitchen," she said.

"We all needed some kind of help. We didn't know what kind of help."

Enter NC VAN.

"It was a little piece of hope that I needed and that we needed desperately," Puryear said.

"A big part of what we do is we offer hope that folks can move forward and experience some measure of joy," Battle said.

The federal government mandates that a significant percentage of the funding that is doled out by the Governor's Crime Commission go to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse.

The families of homicide victims are less of a priority, a fact that worries Battle.

"There is a lot we can do to support them and they deserve that," she said.

The Governor's Crime Commission told WRAL News, "We support NC VAN and their work. The federal funding that NC VAN and other organizations previously relied upon has been cut dramatically. We are working closely with groups such as NC Van that are looking for new sources of funding following the loss of some or all of their VOCA funding.”