The Trump Administration’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., fired hundreds of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) employees, impacting projects that prevent sexual violence nationwide. The mass terminations eliminated an estimated two-thirds of the Division of Violence Prevention staff, who work on prevention strategies for many forms of violence, including sexual assault, rape, child abuse, and gun violence.
The Sexual Violence Prevention Association (SVPA) is calling for an immediate reversal of these firings and insists the Division of Violence Prevention is reinstated to its full operating capacity.
The Division of Violence Prevention is part of the Injury Center at the CDC. With a significant amount of this federal workforce cut, entire teams that focused on child maltreatment and rape prevention are eliminated. At the same time, the leader of another Department of Health and Human Services office, the Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services, which works on domestic violence was placed on administrative leave.
RFK Jr. claims these firings will save taxpayers $1.8 billion a year. Even so, they come at the expense of preventing sexual violence across the country. Sexual violence costs $122,461 per victim, which is a national economic burden of nearly $3.1 trillion.
Furthermore, this comes at a time when President Trump is spending roughly $1 million a day to keep the national guard in D.C., despite lower crime rates and frequent reports that the armed forces aren’t doing anything productive.
In a Senate hearing on September 4th, RFK Jr. aggressively defended his controversial firings and policy changes at the CDC, despite pressure from both Republican and Democratic senators.
The CDC Division of Violence Prevention researches and implements strategies for sexual violence prevention and “collaborates with funded recipients and other partners to disseminate, implement, and scale-up proven strategies,” according to their official site. Nearly the entire division is gone and can no longer address specific types of violence such as child sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, teen dating violence, sexual violence, and elder abuse. These severe cuts will also very likely impact relevant data collection, research, and resources provided by the CDC.
Without people to administer the funds, this will essentially cut the Rape Prevention Education (RPE) Program among other similar violence prevention programs. The federal government has a crucial role in preventing and intervening in sexual violence throughout the country. All 50 states receive federal assistance through these programs, including funding, system design, and evaluation. Without the federal government supporting these efforts, state and local groups across the country are on their own. Sexual violence and rape crisis centers that rely heavily on federal funding are confused and stressed about how they will continue their necessary efforts.
These decisions have been met with a rare bipartisan pushback. Congress mandated the work these agencies do, which includes supporting state and local programs for sexual assault around the country. Those laws, including the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), have had bipartisan support.
A group of congressional Democrats sent a letter to RFK Jr. to express concern about these cuts. “We ask that you immediately rescind the reduction in force for these important initiatives, and explain how you will ensure that these programs continue to operate effectively,” they wrote.
Republicans have criticized the firings as well. The strongest opposition among Republicans on Capitol Hill came from Senator Bill Cassidy, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who stated that the high-profile terminations require congressional oversight.
The SVPA, like many Republicans and Democrats in Congress, opposes these unjust firings and the impacts it will have on sexual violence nationwide. The SVPA insists Congress passes a law reinstating the CDC’s full Division of Violence Prevention and oversees all future mass firings from the Trump Administration.
