Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response (STAR) was awarded two competitive funding grants totaling $1 million to refine and expand its services, the center announced on Monday.
“We are thrilled to receive this much-needed funding to expand our services to sexual assault survivors,” Racheal Hebert, executive director of STAR said in the release. “These projects will allow STAR to strengthen our direct advocacy services to survivors, create new services to address the legal needs of survivors, enhance collaboration with our medical and criminal justice partners, and develop regional protocols to address sexual assault in the Capital Region.”
The first $500,000 grant comes courtesy of The Legal Assistance for Victims Program. It is a three-year grant aimed at providing legal services for sexual assault survivors.
The project is a collaboration between STAR and the Clinical Legal Education Program of the LSU Law Center and promised to provide “holistic, free, competent legal services to survivors in matters resulting from the aftermath of sexual assault to enhance their safety, privacy, self-sufficiency, and well-being.”
“The exposure law students will receive assisting survivors of sexual trauma will teach them first-hand how their work as lawyers can better people’s lives,” Robert Lancaster, the Director of Clinical Legal Education at the LSU Law Center said in the release.
The second grant, totaling $650,000 over a three-year period, comes via The Grants to Encourage Arrest Programs, which awarded the Louisiana Department of Justice and Attorney General the money.
According to the release, the Attorney General has subcontracted with STAR to rectify a lack of coordinated community response to sexual assault.