The GLBTQ Domestic Violence Project — an organization that for 22 years has been at the forefront of creating support services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault where there had been few to none for the LGBT community — is dissolving after Dec. 1, 2015.
Effective Jan. 1, 2015, the group is planning to transfer much of its direct services programming to the Violence Recovery Program at Fenway Health. This includes advocacy programs serving Boston, Cape Cod and Western Massachusetts as well as legal and sexual assault case management.
Greg De Cenzo, the group’s board chair, stated in a recent GLBTQ-DVP press release that the closure comes due to a deficit in funding. “A trend is visible, and the organization needs to be in front of it,” he says. “With our focus on long term stability, the Board prioritized staking out a course to ensure the overwhelming majority of our programming will be here for LGBTQ survivors for many years to come.”
Anyone who has or is currently receiving services through GLBTQ-DVP — as well as those still seeking advocacy or legal assistance concerning domestic violence and/or sexual assault — can contact the organization at (800) 832-1901. The organization’s staff is on call to provide referrals and assist transferring clients to new service organizations.
Over its 22-year history, the GLBTQ-DVP has made many important contributions to the community, as the press release points out:
The organization opened the first GLBTQ-specific 24-hour domestic violence hotline, the first GLBTQ-specific domestic violence residential facility, and one of the first two GLBTQ attorney programs in the country. GLBTQ-DVP was the first to document the prevalence of gay male domestic violence, back when no one was researching the issue. GLBTQ-DVP succeeded in getting GLBTQ domestic violence into the Massachusetts State Budget, and changed domestic violence language in the state budget from “women and children” to fully inclusive language. GLBTQ-DVP led a groundbreaking discrimination lawsuit, representing a gay male survivor who was denied services at a mainstream domestic violence program. Nationally, the organization helped pass a GLBTQ inclusive Federal Violence Against Women Act with the first ever congressionally passed GLBT-specific federal non-discrimination provision. And the list of firsts goes on.
