Super PACs had spent $9.6 million on primaries for state Assembly and Senate as of Monday, according to a New York Focus analysis — nearly five times the amount spent through the same period in 2024. Much of the spending was focused on defeating candidates endorsed by local DSA chapters, which fielded their biggest-ever slate of candidates for state office in an effort to build on last year’s election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor.

“Zohran is the catalyst. His win woke people up,” said Jeff Leb, a strategist who is running a super PAC devoted to supporting moderate candidates against DSA-aligned challengers.

“DSA has momentum, they’re running their largest slate in New York, and they think they’ve figured out the playbook. That’s why people are responding,” he said, referring to groups spending against socialists.

The anti-DSA spending, which totaled $2.9 million, largely failed to win races. In New York City, Senate candidate Aber Kawas and Assembly contenders Christian Celeste Tate, David Orkin, Eon Huntley, Illapa Sairitupac, Samantha Kattan all defeated their opponents by double digits. In Buffalo, Assembly candidate Adam Bojak appears likely to become DSA’s first legislator from Western New York. And in Syracuse, Maurice Brown’s challenge against a 28-year incumbent Assemblymember was too close to call on Tuesday night.

The only DSA-backed candidate to concede Tuesday was Assembly candidate Conrad Blackburn, who was trailing incumbent Jordan Wright. Outside groups spent over $900,000 against Blackburn, more than against any other DSA candidate.

At a watch party on Tuesday, Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of New York City DSA, attributed the victories to the group’s volunteer army. “The incumbents just were not able to keep up,” he said.

Another $1.4 million was spent to support more moderate candidates facing progressive opponents not backed by DSA, such as Stephanie Ruskay against Eli Northrup for Assembly and Grace Lee against Yuh-Line Niou for Senate. Ruskay lost to Northrup by a wide margin, while Lee easily defeated Niou.

The gains will give DSA at least 15 endorsed lawmakers between the Senate and Assembly starting next year, assuming the primary winners all prevail in the November general election. Although the bloc remains a small fraction of the 63-seat Senate and 150-seat Assembly, DSA has been influential in Albany since electing its first lawmaker in 2018 — shaping laws to prevent evictions and allow the state to build its own renewable energy projects. A bigger socialist bloc could help Mamdani as he readies for another campaign next year to increase taxes on wealthy people and corporations.

Gambling companies, the delivery company DoorDash, and pro-charter school groups were among the biggest spenders on state races this year. Though the influx had the potential to reshape the balance of power in Albany, it was overshadowed by the even greater outside spending in New York’s congressional races.

The congressional primary cycle has been the most expensive in New York’s history, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets, with more than $50 million in outside spending. Super PACs took center stage in those races, as rival AI giants faced off in Manhattan’s 12th District (along with a billionaire former mayor), pro-Israel and pro-Palestine PACs dueled in Upper Manhattan’s 13th District race, and outside spending supplied some of the biggest attack lines in the progressive civil war of Brooklyn’s 7th District.

Still, super PAC activity in state-level races grew more dramatically over recent election cycles than it did in congressional races. (People and companies can donate unlimited amounts of money to super PACs, avoiding the contribution limits that apply to campaigns.)

Including the $449,000 spent to influence the primary for state comptroller, super PACs had spent $10 million on state races through Monday. Just $2 million had been spent at the same point in 2024.

The $10 million figure does not include nearly $12 million that an Uber-funded group had reported spending on advertisements boosting Governor Kathy Hochul and her efforts to rein in auto insurance premiums. Hochul did not have a primary opponent after her challenger dropped out in early February.

Through Monday, the biggest spender seeking to influence this year’s Democratic primaries for the legislature was the super PAC New York Future, which had spent $2.6 million and was funded primarily by the gaming companies FanDuel and DraftKings. A group funded by DoorDash had reported the second-most spending ($885,000).

A mysterious group called Progress for New York had reported spending $781,000, and according to paperwork filed by the committee, planned to spend solely to influence the outcome of a single Democratic primary for Senate in Queens. The incumbent senator in the district, Jessica Ramos, charges that Mets owner Steve Cohen is funding the super PAC as retribution for Ramos unsuccessfully opposing Cohen’s Queens casino project. A spokesperson for Cohen’s casino project has not responded to the accusation.

Ramos lost her reelection bid on Tuesday night to Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, who had the super PAC’s backing.

The next highest spender ($752,000) was a pro-charter school group, Moving New York Families Forward, that has received substantial past funding from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. That was followed by the liberal Working Families Party ($709,000) and a group called Westside Progress ($705,000) that has ties to allies of former governor Andrew Cuomo and also recently received $250,000 from the state teachers union.

This year’s spending is also a massive jump from 2022, when Hochul was running for a first full term of office. Although there were Democratic and Republican primaries for governor that year, only about $2.3 million in primary-related spending had been reported up to primary day. (This figure does not include $2 million spent by a group that supported Hochul’s Democratic primary challenger that year but never registered its activities with the state Board of Elections.)

In the 2020 primaries, even less — about $830,000 — had been spent to this point.

Strategists said much of this year’s jump in outside spending can be attributed to DSA’s rise. Donors to super PACs that opposed DSA candidates include real estate companies like SL Green and the Durst Organization; the developers Gary Barnett and Henry Elghanayan; and wealthy individuals like Adeena Rosen and Lori Schreiber who donate frequently to pro-Israel causes.

“Groups aligned with traditional Democrats are concerned that if the DSA has a stranglehold in the legislature, are they going to start seeing these policies that Zohran said he was going to pass in the city?” said a strategist who was granted anonymity to avoid antagonizing the leaders of a super PAC for whom they are working this year.

About half the outside spending was directed against socialist and progressive candidates. The other half came from groups pushing their own interests with less of an ideological focus; the pro-betting PAC, for example, supported both the progressive Northrup for Assembly as well as moderate incumbent state Senators Jessica Scarcella-Spanton and Joseph Addabbo. (Addabbo chairs the Senate gaming committee and has championed the legalization of online casino games in New York, a top legislative priority for the gaming companies funding the group.)

The state’s matching fund system, intended to empower small donors, may also have the perverse effect of encouraging super PAC activity, the strategist argued, by lowering limits on direct donations to campaigns.

“How do you curry favor with electeds? How do you make the case that you were more responsible for getting someone elected than not?” the strategist said. “The only way to do that now is with outside spending.”

Leb, who runs a super PAC that backed moderate candidates, said more clients are waking up to their ability to shape state races without spending as much as in a congressional election. The DSA’s victories won’t change that, he predicted Tuesday night.

“These races are competitive now, and that’s not going away,” he said. “Tonight’s lesson isn’t that spending doesn’t matter. It’s that late spending isn’t enough.”

“Back to Basics in Math,” passed as part of the state budget last month, requires school districts to use “evidence-based” methods in elementary school math classrooms.

It directs the State Education Department to develop best practices for teaching math in grades K-5 by January, and requires that school districts complete a survey verifying their alignment with those standards by September 2027. The budget also sets aside $2 million for the teachers’ union to administer a training course and another $2 million for regional pilots supporting districts with low math performance.

The structure mirrors Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature literacy initiative, which has been criticized as having weak accountability measures and using a questionable union-developed training course.

Transforming math education could be even more challenging.

Unlike “the science of reading,” which relies on a widely embraced framework, educators and researchers are less aligned on what counts as evidence-based instruction in math. While most states have adopted laws or policies related to the science of reading, far fewer have done so with math, leaving New York with few models to draw from.

Advocates say those ongoing debates over math instruction, coupled with the state’s decision to model the initiative on its literacy reform, could hamper progress. For state leaders, the effort’s success could help transform New York from one of the Northeast’s lowest-performing states in math into a model for improvement. For students, it could shape their access to higher education and high-paying jobs.

But only if it’s implemented properly. “I think there’s a big lack of understanding of what proper instruction is, and there’s a really big disconnect between ‘evidence-based practices’ and teacher training programs,” said Erica Fanning, math researcher and school psychologist at the City School District of Albany.

As with reading, the stakes are high. Research shows that math proficiency is one of the strongest predictors of future adult earnings, high school graduation, and college enrollment.

Improving math education is also key to reducing educational inequities: On the 2024 NAEP eighth-grade math exam, Black and Latino New York students scored below white students by 26 and 30 points, respectively. New York was ranked 38th in the nation for fourth-grade math, behind all other Northeastern states besides Maine, and 17 points below top-ranked Massachusetts.

Hochul said the initiative aims to ensure New York students are “the most academically prepared in the country.” If the effort fails, advocates say, students of color and those from low-income backgrounds have the most to lose.

Across the country, schools have seen a decade-long decline in reading and math performance that was exacerbated by the pandemic. That’s spurred a wave of reform, including a high-profile push based on the science of reading. This phonics-based approach is grounded in the idea that reading isn’t innate and must be explicitly taught through skills like sounding out words. When New York enacted its Back to Basics plan in 2024, it joined at least 37 other states that had implemented similar policies.

Math instruction, by contrast, has received relatively little attention. The push to change how children learn math is still in its infancy. That’s in part because there’s little agreement on the best approach.

On one side of the so-called “math wars” are advocates of more explicit, teacher-led instruction who argue that students should first build fluency in foundational skills — such as memorizing multiplication tables or working through a math problem step by step — before they can understand deeper concepts. On the other are proponents of inquiry-based instruction, which emphasizes student problem-solving and exploration of mathematical ideas before formal procedures are introduced.

Many New York schools use curricula that align with the latter. But critics, including special education researchers, say it can reduce student confidence, hinder learning of foundational skills, and cause struggling students to fall further behind. Ben Solomon, a math researcher and associate professor of school psychology at the University of Albany, said there’s a time and place for both pedagogies — but he and other “science of math” advocates believe students should primarily receive explicit instruction before moving on to more conceptual lessons.

The lack of consensus makes it difficult to know what the law counts as “evidence-based teaching techniques and materials.” The clearest indication so far came last year, when NYSED released eight briefs outlining “best practices” in numeracy and math instruction. Written by Deborah Loewenberg Ball, a professor of education at the University of Michigan, and TeachingWorks, a project at the university, the briefs take the more conceptual approach, arguing that explicit instruction should “be grounded in meaning and understanding of why the procedures work.”

Solomon is among a group of over 200 math researchers, educators, and parents who signed a petition describing the briefs as full of factual inaccuracies and calling for the state to retract them.

In an October response, the state agency doubled down on the guidance, and Loewenberg Ball argued that Solomon cited only a narrow segment of research that was not broad enough “to address the complexity of mathematics teaching and learning.” The guidance is still in place.

Solomon said he worries the agency’s response to his criticisms reflects a reluctance to draw on the expertise of a broad range of math researchers when deciding on what counts as evidence-based math instruction.

“We’re trying to turn around a huge ship that’s been cruising for a long time,” Solomon said. “That takes deep structural change that will be very challenging in New York.”

Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-NY, shares that concern, though he noted that the math debate is more nuanced than literacy, and effective instruction likely falls somewhere between the petitioners’ and the state’s positions.

In a statement provided to New York Focus, NYSED spokesperson Karen Male said the briefs are “grounded in research,” and underwent external review to support high-quality P-12 math instruction. She added that while NYSED shares Solomon’s dedication to improving math outcomes for students, the department “will not be swayed by misinformation or efforts to undermine our work to advance equity and excellence in education.”

Some advocates worry the math law’s structural similarities to the reading initiative portend difficulties down the line.

As part of the new law, school districts will have to report the curricula and instructional materials they’re using in K-5 classrooms and verify that they align with state-developed standards, but it’s largely up to individual districts to make the transition and self-certify.

The reading initiative also tasked school districts with completing an alignment survey: A New York Focus analysis of their responses found that more than 130 school districts reported using curricula that researchers criticized as inconsistent with the science of reading — including dozens that claimed that their materials aligned with all recommended best practices.

In New York, most decisions about public schools, from curricula to school spending, are determined at the district level, posing obstacles to successful education reform, Solomon said.

“If you create objectives and goals and then let it work its way through the system, it’s going to mutate based on everyone’s individual philosophies,” he said.

In order for the math initiative to be more successful than the reading effort, Smink said the state must increase transparency regarding the curricula and instructional materials in use, and hold districts accountable if they are out of alignment with best practices. (The Education Department said it would follow up with school districts that had failed to comply with the literacy law, but did not specify when districts must achieve full compliance.)

As with the reading initiative, the state budget sets aside money — $2 million — for the teachers’ union to administer a training course. A recent Hechinger Report investigation found that the $10 million union-developed training course for the Back to Basics in reading effort featured some of the instructional methods Hochul set out to replace.

The union has defended the program and refuted the idea that it promoted discredited strategies. Elizabeth Bird, Hochul’s assistant secretary for K-12 education, told New York Focus the criticism was “instructive,” and that the governor’s office is asking the union to review training materials “to make sure they are guided in evidence-based practices.”

Finding the right curricula could also be a challenge. There are few evidence-based math curricula readily available for districts to use, said Lynn Gaffney, an assistant superintendent at Watertown City School District. That’s in part because publishers tend to design materials aimed at satisfying school districts’ broad range of instructional approaches, rather than adhering to national standards.

When Gaffney transitioned into a new role overseeing curriculum and instruction at the Jefferson County district, she faced a troubling reality: Fewer than one in three students in grades 3 through 8 were meeting math proficiency standards. The district was relying on outdated instructional programs that failed to reflect research on how students best learn math, she said.

For the past three years, Gaffney has been leading an effort to implement evidence-based math. But when it came time to implement a new curriculum, Gaffney said the district was unable to find one that aligned with both the science of learning and New York state standards, prompting district leaders to develop their own.

Gaffney is excited by the state’s attention to math instruction, but like Solomon, she said she needs to see the state’s guidance before determining its potential impact on student outcomes.

“We’re not an evidence-based profession traditionally, we’re more of an ideology-based, philosophy-based profession, and that works to some degree, but it’s not working for most of our kids,” Gaffney said. “So we need to move away from that towards the evidence.”

“This was wonderful,” she thought, when they received the welcome notice in March that said Cody would be covered through 2026. She had been scrambling to figure out a solution before he aged out of Child Health Plus, the state’s health care program for children who are 18 and under.

But a month later, Hauptman logged into her state health account, where a message explained Cody would be among the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers whose coverage would be terminated on July 1 as a result of federal cuts. Adding to the confusion, Cody’s insurance company hadn’t updated its system to reflect the upcoming change.

Similar situations have been playing out across New York as the state prepares to shed an estimated 450,000 residents who earn between 200 to 250 percent of the federal poverty level off the Essential Plan. Tightened eligibility criteria will also end coverage for some people defined by the federal government as lawfully present immigrants and who earn even less.

Health care advocates say the state’s delayed and unclear messaging strategy around the Essential Plan changes has fostered confusion and done little to prepare New Yorkers for the seismic shift in health care access.

Arlene Cruz Escobar, director of health programs at Make the Road New York, said the group was receiving many calls from recipients who seemed stressed and anxious. “It’s going to be a disaster,” she said.

She said her staff is hearing from frantic families confused by the termination notices — some of them several pages long and filled with language that could be misleading. She pointed to a sentence in the first April notice which reads, “You don’t need to do anything unless your personal situation has changed,” which may have mistakenly given impacted users the impression that their coverage was not at risk or dissuaded them from seeking additional information.

Advocates like Cruz Escobar have been urging the state to act quickly to avert the coverage cliff since last summer, but top legislators tabled the issue — pledging to address the matter during annual budget negotiations that started in January. A delayed state budget was finally unveiled in late May, but failed to include proposals supported by a coalition of lawmakers to use state funds to keep these New Yorkers insured and make plans available for purchase on the state’s health care exchange more affordable.

New Yorkers with questions about their coverage should contact the New York State of Health’s call center at 1-855-355-5777 to connect with an assistor. New York City residents who need help navigating the marketplace can also connect with a local enrollment counselor by calling 347-665-0214.

In an interview, Danielle Holahan, executive director at New York State of Health, the state-run insurance marketplace, acknowledged that the state’s messaging strategy could be improved. “We agree, they’re not written in plain language,” she said of plan notices that went out in April and May and were required to contain specific legal information.

She said the department is continuing to work on simplifying additional notices and has been trying to ensure they reach impacted users on multiple platforms such as emails and text messages. The department also recently wrapped up training for their network of assistors who will be contacting impacted New Yorkers about how to buy insurance from the state’s health care exchange website.

Holahan also acknowledged that the overall timing of the notices has been complicated by delayed action from the federal government and a drawn-out state budget process. When the state first learned of the federal cutbacks last year, health officials devised a strategy to retool the Essential Plan — averting a worse-case scenario that could have ended the program entirely for all 1.7 million New Yorkers. After months of delay amid a federal government shutdown, the state finally secured approval to move forward with a scaled-back version of the Essential Plan in late March 2026.

“It was making the best of a very bad situation for New York,” Holahan said of the now scaled-back Essential Plan. She also noted that health officials had been following the state budget process closely to see whether any changes would be made for the Essential Plan. “There’s been a lot of moving parts.”

Earlier this month, Hauptman was able to transfer Cody — who struggles with mental health issues — to Medicaid. She currently works as a family peer advocate on Long Island, helping other families navigate mental health challenges.

Hauptman, a single mother, said that adding Cody to her current employer-provided coverage or purchasing a plan on the state’s health care exchange are both out of reach financially. She is now considering relocating to a city with a lower cost of living or finding a new job that provides more affordable employer-sponsored health care plans.

Cruz Escobar urged the state to ramp up its awareness campaign around Essential Plan terminations, use plain and easier-to-understand language, and include case-specific information in notices and other tools like state websites that clearly spell out how much marketplace plans could cost every month based on household income.

“This is a really big learning curve for families; there needs to be a lot more education,” said Cruz Escobar, who previously worked as a health care navigator and routinely spent hours with clients explaining concepts like deductibles, coinsurance and co-pays. “Many people are going to be caught off guard because, maybe for the first time, they’ll have to purchase private insurance. That’s a whole different experience on how to utilize that coverage.”

Getting the message fully across to impacted clients like Doris Velasquez has been a hurdle. Velasquez works as a home attendant and relies on the plan to manage her high blood pressure and migraines, chronic health conditions that have previously landed her in the emergency room. Her diabetic husband and college-age son are also covered by the Essential Plan — all three are slated to lose their coverage in July.

Like many Essential Plan users, the family was previously covered under Medicaid and shifted to the Essential Plan three years ago as their household income grew. Speaking through a Spanish translator, Velasquez told Focus she understands their coverage is ending, but is unsure whether her family can afford to buy insurance and isn’t sure what to do next.

Cruz Escobar said her staff have been helping clients navigate the state’s marketplace, only for clients to be discouraged by costly monthly premiums and high deductibles. Eligibility for tax credits that reduce the cost of monthly premiums depends on projected household income — math that can get complicated for gig workers and later result in an IRS bill during tax season. “A lot of people in these income levels are people who have multiple jobs and multiple part-time jobs or who bounce around from job to job and their income is inconsistent,” she said.

State health officials acknowledged that it is common for household income to fluctuate throughout the year for many on the Essential Plan, meaning a monthly premium can be hard to meet during specific months, and coverage might change when participants recertify their income if they shift across different tiers. They estimate impacted Essential Plan users will be eligible for a state exchange plan with an average monthly premium of $250 after tax credits and a deductible of $2,150. By comparison, the Essential Plan has no monthly premiums and no deductibles.

Holahan said that the department’s current projections indicate anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 impacted Essential Plan users will be unable to buy insurance or get coverage through their employers and therefore will remain uninsured. But other estimates anticipate far more severe outcomes — the progressive think tank Fiscal Policy Institute predicts fewer than 70,000 of the roughly 450,000 impacted users will be able to buy insurance, leaving the vast remainder uninsured.

Sam, a 40-year-old artist and dog trainer in Queens, is still unclear on the status of her Essential Plan coverage. She received a notice last year from the state, warning that her coverage might be at risk in 2026 due to upcoming federal changes, but said she never received any follow-up message. When she called the state and her insurer earlier this year, she was told she would be unaffected by the July termination.

Are you one of the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers impacted by the coverage cliff for Essential Plan users? Our social services reporter wants to hear from you. Email Jie Jenny Zou at jenny@nysfocus.com. 

But Sam isn’t sure that’s true. Her health card, issued earlier this year, suggests she falls within the impacted income tier, but other notices from the state indicate she might be in the tier just below that, which would spare her from disenrollment. She asked that her last name not be published for fear of drawing the state’s attention to her case.

“I didn’t have health insurance for pretty much my entire twenties,” said Sam. “That would be a real burden if that went away,” she said of her Essential Plan coverage, which helps her access preventative care and stay up-to-date on allergy appointments.

Pete Tomao, communications director at Empire State Voices, a group that advocates for working New Yorkers, said he has encountered several people like Sam who are unclear where they stand. “We’re hearing from residents across the state who don’t know if they’ll keep their coverage — or how they’d afford care without it. Some have been told their Essential Plan remains intact, while others were warned just months ago they could lose it, leaving thousands of families in limbo.”

Holahan encourages all impacted New Yorkers to review their options on the state’s health care exchange as soon as possible. Impacted Essential Plan users will be able to purchase a plan on the New York State of Health website through the end of August.

She also noted that any coverage purchased this summer will be retroactive and backdated to July 1, so New Yorkers who purchase a plan will not face a coverage gap and can take their time to sort through the myriad of options available.

As Crooks prepared to get her son ready for school, she heard a loud boom and saw several people running out of a room in the motel’s rear building.

“When they ran out saying ‘Fire, fire, fire!’ I saw the flames coming out of the room behind them,” she said. Crooks said she roused her son and ran from door to door, trying to wake people up and get them out.

In less than 10 minutes, the fire swept down and engulfed almost the entire building, including Michelle Woolfolk’s room. Woolfolk, better known as Auntie at the Knights Inn, had lived in the motel for about two years and would often have Crooks over to talk, listen to music, and paint together. Crooks said that Woolfolk suffered from chronic pain and had difficulty walking.

Woolfolk was one of six people to die in the fire. Dominique Cruz-Champion and Josh Molyneaux, a young couple, and their children Ella, Romyn, and Zachariah all perished, New York State Police Captain Lucas Anthony said at a press conference on Thursday.

The children were ages three, two, and 10 months.

The tragedy has sparked a backlash against Broome County’s heavy use of hotels and motels as emergency shelter for homeless families, with local protesters holding a continuous rally at the county office building in Binghamton since 4 pm Tuesday. Fifty-six of the people living in the Knights Inn on Monday were placed there by the county Department of Social Services. The department did not say whether that included any of the victims of the fire.

Local residents say the department has knowingly placed families in unsafe conditions. New York Focus and ProPublica reported last year that the department’s inspections had found a litany of issues at the motel for years, such as broken lighting, windows, and doors, punched-through walls, torn carpeting, and cockroaches.

At least two fires were reported at the Knights Inn in 2024, and health inspectors found in 2022 that the motel was not in compliance with fire safety requirements, documents reviewed by New York Focus show. The motel did pass an inspection in April of last year, the most recent available.

“What happened yesterday was preventable. It could have been prevented had our city officials did something about it, or even took us seriously,” said Jasmine Stradford, who lived with her family at the Knights Inn in 2024.

The Broome County Department of Social Services placed over 200 households at the Knights Inn from April 2023 to March 2024, the last full year of data available. Many described unlivable conditions, frequent drug use, and repeated visits from law enforcement. Over about six years, law enforcement and emergency services were summoned for 789 incidents.

DSS deferred questions about fire safety issues at the Knights Inn to Broome County Executive Jason Garnar’s office, which did not respond in time for publication.

A previous fire at the motel in January 2024 may have been caused by a space heater in a room that was under construction, WNBF reported at the time. Eight months later, another fire was reported in a room, according to a complaint received by the Town of Union and reviewed by New York Focus.

Broome County announced plans last month to move away from hotels as shelter for unhoused families. But as it searched for an organization to manage the overhaul of its homeless services, it continued to place families in hotels, including the Knights Inn.

One year ago, New York Focus and ProPublica profiled the Knights Inn as part of an investigation, which found that nearly half of all households receiving emergency shelter outside of New York City are placed in hotels. The Broome County Department of Social Services paid the Knights Inn $750,000 for emergency shelter despite the motel getting written up in every inspection for two and a half years.

Some of those citations were fire-related. The Knights Inn received a critical violation in 2022 for not properly operating and maintaining its fire system, according to inspection data from the New York Department of Health. Management was aware and working to fix it as soon as possible, according to the inspection comments, and the motel didn’t receive any violations in its most recent available inspection, dated April 2025.

New York Focus and ProPublica spoke with the hotel’s manager Aizaz Siddiqui last year. At the time, Siddiqui said that around half of the rooms were typically occupied by people placed by the Department of Social Services and acknowledged that police were regularly called to the hotel.

New York Focus was able to reach Siddiqui by phone Tuesday to schedule an interview, but could not contact him Wednesday morning.

Broome County’s homeless population has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, leading to the increased reliance on hotels for shelter. Because the local shelters generally only house single adults, the county is almost completely reliant on hotels for emergency housing for families with children.

The county is one of the poorest in the state. The strain on low-income families has increased as the county government has failed to build affordable housing while developers expanded student-only housing to serve local university communities, said Rebecca Rathmell, a Binghamton city councilmember and housing advocate. A housing needs study commissioned by the county and published in 2024 found that nearly half of renter households spent half or more of their income on housing.

John Choynowski, a former deputy commissioner for Broome DSS, suggested the tragedy may be downstream of structural issues such as long-frozen benefits levels, understaffing at the social services department, and the practice of housing families at hotels.

“Has anyone spent a week in a hotel with their kids on vacation? It is stressful and impossible. Imagine having to live in a hotel, share beds, have a microwave to cook in for months at a time?” he wrote on Facebook. “This leads to increased calls to the hotline of alleged abuse and neglect. It’s not abuse and neglect, it is a family trying to survive in poverty. These families are set up for failure.”

The New York State Police announced that they arrested Tyler Russell, 24, on six counts of second-degree manslaughter and one count of fourth-degree arson. Under New York’s penal code, both offenses are reckless in nature, but don’t necessarily mean the person intended to kill or destroy property.

Russell’s charges could change as police gather more evidence, officials said on Thursday. They said investigators had located a lighter they believed was used to start the fire, but did not share additional details about the circumstances leading up to the blaze.

Russell listed his home address as “The Knight’s Hotel” on paperwork for his arraignment obtained by New York Focus. State prison records indicate he was paroled earlier this year after spending about two years in prison for stealing a vehicle. Nancy Williams, the DSS commissioner, declined Thursday to say whether her agency had placed him at the hotel.

Russell is being held at the Broome County Correctional Facility without bail, according to court documents. He did not respond to a request for comment sent via the jail’s messaging app.

The county sent Crooks and her son to a new hotel, the Red Roof Inn in Binghamton. Most of their belongings were in a storage unit that was destroyed by the fire. They haven’t been allowed back into their room to retrieve clothes or the electric scooter her fiancé uses to get to work. On Tuesday, she took her son to see a counselor.

Davona Parker, Woolfolk’s younger sister, said her sister spent roughly $900 a month for her room, eating up most of her disability check. With the money she had left over, Woolfolk liked to buy food and small gifts for other residents. Last year, the ceiling of her room fell in, and she got pneumonia that Parker attributed to mold at the motel. Even so, Woolfolk felt comfortable there.

“She was happy she made friends with anybody that moved in or out of there,” Parker said. “She didn’t feel any longer alone, so it was kind of like home to her. She got used to it.”

For months, they’ve been talking to workers in 12 languages, including Creole, Yoruba, and Burmese. There are about 200,000 aides to reach, and the union needs signatures from at least 60,000 to even call for an election. Then it still has to win.

If it does, 1199 hopes to boost aides’ wages and benefits, as it has successfully done in other states. Since the aides are paid by New York state, 1199 will seek more taxpayer funding for home care, on top of the current $11 billion budget — a tough sell when Governor Kathy Hochul has spent years pursuing cuts.

Any boost would be welcome news to the aides, who make less than $21 per hour doing hard physical work: feeding, clothing, bathing, and toileting infirm and disabled New Yorkers. Family members can serve as aides, so the job is often personal.

But many workers are reluctant to trust the union. New York Focus independently spoke to more than a dozen aides for this story, and eight were either against it or leaning in that direction.

Saba Nakhai, 32, who cares for her mother in Westchester full time, told New York Focus that she doesn’t see a place for the union in her work. “Maybe if I was working at a corporation, I would want a union,” she said. “But here, who’s the enemy, my mom?”

To win, 1199 must convince workers like Nakhai that they need an advocate — not against their patients, but against the sprawling bureaucracy that sets their wages and benefits.

If it’s successful, 1199 — already one of New York’s political kingmakers — will become even more powerful. Its membership and dues revenue will balloon, enabling more organizing and lobbying.

The union plans to ask for an election this fall. At the call center, its organizers dial away, working with quiet focus. “Believe in yourself,” a sign on the wall reads. “You got this.”

The engine of the campaign is workers like Jeannine Hutchinson, 54, who has been a member of 1199 for two decades. She spent more than half of that time working at a hospital in Far Rockaway, Queens, the neighborhood where she grew up and raised her own family.

She liked her most recent job as a patient navigator, guiding people through labyrinths of paperwork and treatment options. She could walk to work in 10 minutes, and spend lunch breaks on Rockaway Beach.

But late last year, when her union rep asked Hutchinson to spend a year working at 1199 headquarters in Manhattan, more than an hour’s commute away, she didn’t even ask what the role was.

“I said, ‘Bet, when do I start?” she told New York Focus. “This is the faith that I have in my union.”

It’s easy to understand that faith. Hutchinson’s husband was in 1199 as a nursing home worker before he retired, and two of her three children, who are social workers, are also members. The union has given her family “an opportunity to have a fair chance,” she says.

Five days a week, Hutchinson leaves her house around 7:00 am, and gets back a little after 6:00 pm. She brings her work phone home, and takes calls at family dinners, at church, and from bed.

Workers are often dubious, and ask Hutchinson if joining the union will really get them better wages.

“We can’t guarantee anything,” she tells them. “But there are some dreams and aspirations that you have that you may not ever reach without having a union.”

She strives to get 25 cards signed a week, the goal that 1199 has set for each organizer. Getting her first card took four calls to the same person.

“Every time I called it was a bad time, but I did not give up,” she said, “and the fourth time was the slam dunk.”

She signed up for one year as an organizer, but she’d like to stay until the union wins, however long that takes.

“I’m the kind of person who likes to see things through,” she said.

The program that 1199 wants to unionize is officially called the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP. Since its launch in 1995, it has expanded to serve hundreds of thousands of disabled and infirm New Yorkers.

The program grew explosively in the past decade. New York’s booming population of senior citizens flocked to care they could get in their own homes for free, and that kept them out of nursing homes. That the care could come from family members was an added bonus.

The union’s big opportunity came in late 2024, when New York hired a company called Public Partnerships, LLC to run the program. Previously, the state paid over 600 companies to do the job, a few of which had been unionized by 1199. PPL’s takeover meant that 1199 would be able to unionize the entire program in one fell swoop.

But the transition to PPL has been rocky, and home health aides have often gotten the short end of the stick. Last week, PPL announced that it had agreed to pay $162 million to settle a wage theft lawsuit alleging that it had chronically underpaid home health workers. It did not admit wrongdoing in the case. And earlier this month, the US Department of Justice sued PPL and New York state, accusing them of rigging the bidding process that led to PPL’s selection. Both New York state and PPL have denied the allegations, and the lawsuit is pending.

The wage theft and bid rigging claims have been circulating for more than a year, but they haven’t dissuaded 1199 from working with PPL. In 2024, before PPL took over, 1199 announced its plan to organize the entire CDPAP workforce, and asked PPL and other companies that bid on the contract not to oppose its union drive. In September 2025, PPL agreed to remain neutral. It also gave 1199 contact information for the home health aides. Through the transition, the union publicly supported PPL despite fierce opposition from many lawmakers and activists.

That bargain made 1199’s campaign possible: Since there’s no central location where aides congregate, 1199 needs to be able to reach them remotely. But workers told New York Focus that the deal also turned many aides against the union, because they see it as too cozy with their unpopular employer.

Since PPL took over the program, Sophie-Anais Renois, 26, who spends most of each weekend caring for her legally blind grandmother on Long Island, has been repeatedly underpaid for her work, she told New York Focus. As she cooks, does laundry, and injects insulin to manage her grandmother’s diabetes, PPL’s timekeeping system shaves hours off her shifts. Many workers have complained of similar bureaucratic hassles.

She spent months trying to get PPL to address the problem as her credit card bills mounted. When she finally reached someone at the company, the person who answered said there was nothing they could do.

PPL declined to comment on Renois’s case, but company vice president Patty Byrnes said, “All personal assistants who submitted fully compliant timesheets in accordance with program rules have been paid on-time and in full.”

Some months ago, Renois learned about the agreement between 1199 and PPL. “It really made me go, ‘Hmm, is this union looking out for my best interest?’” she said. So far, she’s refused to sign a union card.

When asked about PPL’s alleged wage theft, 1199 press secretary Rose Ryan said that the union “strongly supports ending wage theft across the home care industry,” and that it is “vital that these workers be made whole for missing pay.”

The union has a simple defense of its partnership with the bosses: It works.

Every year, it joins forces with New York’s main hospital lobby to pressure lawmakers for more Medicaid funding. If lawmakers refuse, they face barrages of attack ads. Generally, 1199 wins.

This is why, despite the bitter complaints that workers like Renois have against PPL, 1199 doesn’t treat the company as an enemy.

“We know that our interests are aligned,”said Keith Joseph, 1199’s vice president for home care workers, “because the funding comes from the decision the elected official makes in Albany.”

Union leaders are aware that some aides have issues with PPL. The answer to those problems is the union, according to 1199 vice president of new organizing Lystra Sawney, who is leading the campaign.

“We can work together collectively to make those changes,” Sawney said. “Because they can’t make the changes on their own.”

The union has also vowed that it won’t go on strike against PPL.

“Strikes will not be a tool,” said Helen Schaub, 1199’s political director. “There are lots of other ways workers can make their voices heard.”

This isn’t an unusual stance for 1199. When Rose Ryan, the union’s press secretary, recently tried to figure out the last time the union went on strike in downstate New York, no one on staff could remember.

In Massachusetts, 1199 organizers have won significant gains for home care workers. But recently, those wins have come with cuts to other parts of the state’s home care budget.

In 2023, 58,000 state-funded home care workers in Massachusetts represented by 1199 won a contract that included raises, holidays, and paid training. Following the deal, higher wages and growing enrollment pushed spending on the program above $1.7 billion, leading Governor Maura Healey to seek budget cuts. The union initially succeeded at pushing back, but it didn’t last: This year, the state slashed $32 million from home care. Healey is currently asking lawmakers to cut another $68 million.

The cuts didn’t touch the wages that 1199 won for its members. Instead, almost all the savings came from slashing the hours that workers could spend preparing food for their patients, who often cannot cook for themselves. The next round of cuts could further curtail care.

Marcus Johnson, a disability rights activist who is paralyzed from the neck down, fears the impact cuts would have.

His aides are on duty full time: They get him out of bed, feed him meals, and brush his teeth. Tampering with this schedule could make it impossible for him to live at home.

“I don’t want to make it consumers against workers,” he said. “We want the union to support the workers. But are they supporting our community?”

Progressive economists have argued that higher wages benefit patients, too, by attracting more workers and reducing turnover. Higher wages would increase spending and likely create more political pressure for cuts. But 1199 would use its power in Albany to push back.

“Workers are going to fight to make sure the program is funded,” Schaub said. “Especially when many workers are directly related to the consumers.”

Two aides who spoke with New York Focus for this story support the union. Maggie Ornstein, 48, who cares for her mother in Queens, hopes that it can win better health insurance.

“Will it come to fruition? I don’t know,” she said. “But without being in the union, it definitely won’t happen.”

But outright opposition was more common, or at least wariness, like from Carolyn Wember, 68, who cares for her daughter in Brooklyn and doesn’t plan to sign a card.

“My level of trust in the system at this point is just zero,” Wember said.

At 1199 headquarters, organizer Bertha Motta, a home care worker herself, presses on. As she dials for hours a day, she’s fueled by devotion to the union, which she’s belonged to for almost all of the 40 years since she emigrated from Peru.

The work is repetitive, but Motta, 66, is persistent. She was recently woken up at 1:00 am by a call back from an aide who was visiting family in India and forgot about the time difference. They spoke for 45 minutes, and she convinced him to sign up.

When one woman accused her of being a scammer, Motta invited the skeptic to come to 1199 headquarters and meet her in person. The woman traveled from Queens to visit the call center, and then signed a union card in the building’s lobby.

On another recent call, an aide asked Motta how the union would help him. She said it already had — the 55-cent-per-hour raise that all home health aides received at the beginning of 2026 was thanks to a law that 1199 lobbied for in 2023.

To Motta’s surprise, he started laughing, incredulous that she’d brag about 55 cents.

“I told him, ‘But you don’t have idea how we fight for you to get those 55 cents,” Motta said in Peruvian-inflected English. During the campaign for the raise, she told him, she had traveled from her home in Queens to rallies and lobbying days in Albany many times, leaving at 3:30 am and not getting back until the evening.

“You get easily, but you don’t have idea how hard it was for us,” she said.

He signed a card.

The new diploma is a central component of New York Inspires, the State Education Department’s multiyear effort to overhaul graduation requirements to ensure students leave high school ready for modern careers and higher education. If approved by the board, it would replace the current graduation framework, which allows students to earn one of three diplomas depending on how they perform on statewide standardized tests known as Regents exams.

At the meeting, Education Department officials called it the most significant transformation of the state’s graduation system in generations. The plan would direct school districts to shift away from awarding credits based on the time a student spends in a course and instead adopt a “competency-based” model with flexibility in how they develop mastery of specific skills.

“The big idea is that New York is moving away from an outdated factory-style education model toward a model system built for how students actually learn,” said Jeffrey Matteson, the department’s senior deputy commissioner for education policy.

The Education Department has only shared preliminary plans so far, so many implementation details remain unclear. During and after the meeting, some Board of Regents members and education advocates raised concerns about how schools will maintain academic rigor and support teachers as they adopt flexible models, and whether students across the state will have equal access to opportunities.

Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-New York, said New York must strengthen K-8 instruction in order for the initiative to succeed, noting that students can only access opportunities like internships and college courses if they are proficient in reading and math.

The department plans to present the final plan to the board for approval once it’s complete and start a phased rollout in certain grade levels by the end of next school year. Here’s what we know so far.

What is competency-based education?

The Education Department defines competency-based education as a system in which students get closer to graduating after proving they’ve actually learned material instead of just completing required class time.

Students would still enroll in traditional courses, but would also be able to participate in activities outside of the classroom, such as internships, capstone projects, community service and career and technical education programs, to move toward their degrees. Instead of a single exam, students would have different ways to show what they know in each subject, such as assessments, projects, presentations, or portfolios.

In 2024, the Board of Regents announced plans to eliminate the requirement that students pass the Regents exams to receive a diploma. Currently, they can earn one of three diploma designations: a Regents diploma, an advanced Regents diploma for students who pass additional tests, and a local diploma for students who meet testing requirements a different way. On Monday, state officials explained that the exams would be one of many options students can use to qualify for a diploma.

“What will matter moving forward is the quality and substance of the evidence that a student produces, not the particular route that produced it or how long it took,” said Shannon Logan, director of strategic priorities and coordination in the department’s Office of Cultural Education.

What will the new transcript look like?

Current transcripts include a list of classes and assessments with corresponding grades, which do not “adequately reflect what a student knows and what they are able to do,” Angelique Johnson-Dingle, one of the department’s deputy commissioners, said at the meeting. Under the new framework, graduating students would receive a “universal transcript or learner profile.”

The transcript would document alignment with state learning standards and the six attributes the state outlined in its graduation blueprint, called the Portrait of a Graduate. It’s unclear exactly what the transcript would look like.

Will it affect college applications?

There is little evidence that competency-based education disadvantages students in the college admissions process. Many colleges have embraced more holistic admissions practices that consider portfolios and other demonstrations of skills that extend beyond GPA and standardized test scores.

Education Department officials said they are working with colleges and universities to ensure every institution that serves the state’s high school graduates ”understands and trusts” the new diploma.

What does this mean for current students?

Students who started ninth grade in 2023 would be the final cohort to graduate under the state’s current requirements.

Students starting high school in 2024, 2025, or 2026 would still have to fulfill current credit requirements and take the Regents exams, but they would not have to pass the exams to graduate. For the 2027 and 2028 cohorts only, the state would impose a yet-to-be-determined credit requirement.

The new flexible system introduced Monday, which would eliminate time-based credits, would be fully implemented for students who enter high school in 2029.

What are the next steps?

The state is currently reworking learning standards, competency rubrics, and the universal transcript and will release them within the next year. The department said it will continue to schedule working groups and advisory panels to gather feedback on the changes, and is updating the state’s data system to track student progress.

The Education Department encouraged school districts to start designing pilot programs for next school year that include hands-on learning outside of traditional classrooms, a wider range of ways to assess student learning beyond standard exams, and expanded career-related opportunities. Schools could hire work-based learning coordinators, for instance, or partner with local employers.

Over two months, some three dozen Hunter undergraduates met weekly to research the topic, grill the college’s waste managers and outside experts, tour the campus trash trail, and ultimately come to consensus on seven actions aimed at sending less garbage to recycling and landfills.

The CUNY Climate Assembly Project at Hunter, or CCAP, is one of the first citizens assemblies in New York state. The approach involves selecting participants at random, ensuring their demographics accurately reflect the community, and giving their recommendations real weight in decision-making. Also known as civic assembly, popular assembly, lottocracy, or citizen jury, it has been used in Europe for decades and is gaining traction in the United States and around the world.

Some of the Hunter College climate assembly participants were drawn by the $750 stipend. Others had nothing planned for spring break, when the assembly began. And some seized the opportunity to collaborate with others and achieve a tangible good.

“I’ve been in a phase of climate nihilism,” said Luisa Pellettieri, a senior in sociology. “I’m trying to say yes to more things. I’m hoping to get hope back.”

Over the summer, the group will present its recommendations to Hunter College leadership, which promised to review and respond to them. While college leaders did not commit to more binding language, they have been involved and supportive of the effort.

Assembly organizer Forrest Sparks said the project connects people in new ways. “The group that comes together looks like the larger public of Hunter,” he said, addressing the crowd gathered in the West Building’s eighth-floor conference room on a rainy Friday in February, waiting for participants to be drawn from a lottery spinner. Over 23,000 students received an email invitation to opt in to the lottery; 570 accepted the invitation, and 42 were selected by lottery.

“It really expands who decides and who designs within our democracy,” Sparks said to the group. “In our current political system, unfortunately, we don’t have too many pathways to do that. But y’all are leading the way.”

A democratic innovation

Central to any citizens assembly is the selection of participants by lottery. In a given city, an invitation might be mailed to as many as 10,000 to 20,000 people. Of those who respond, several dozen participants are usually chosen with tools that select for both randomness and demographic representativeness.

Running a successful assembly is labor-intensive. Organizers must secure funding, get buy-in from decision-makers who have the power to act on the assembly’s consensus, and recruit a qualified team to plan and lead the process over weeks or months. CCAP was funded by a Mellon Foundation grant and led by professional facilitators and trained graduate students.

But the payoffs can be significant. Proponents say citizens assemblies surface genuine public opinion and generate creative solutions that politicians — constrained by loyalties and conflicts — might never reach. They build trust in public policymaking, and participants often report feeling more engaged in democracy, sometimes for the first time.

Former New York City comptroller and councilmember Brad Lander called for a citizens assembly on housing while campaigning for mayor last year. “At a time of catastrophically low trust in our democracy, I believe citizens assemblies can help to renew it,” Lander, who is now a candidate for Congress, told New York Focus.

The model also forges unusual bonds: Because a citizen assembly’s “mini-public” mirrors the demographics of its community, participants collaborate with people unlike them politically and socioeconomically, and elected officials get policy options with democratic legitimacy already built in.

Local leaders

The Hunter College climate project isn’t the city’s only citizens assembly.

Through June 21, New York City residents over the age of 11 can vote on local projects in a city-sponsored deliberative process called The People’s Money. The five boroughs have $4 million total to spend on priorities selected through borough-level citizens assemblies.

Now in its fourth cycle, The People’s Money unfolds in four phases: open idea submission, a citizens assembly in each borough to choose finalist ideas, a public vote, and then implementation. Projects have included swim lessons for children in NYCHA housing, food-growing and cooking programs, and housing education for older adults.

The program is run by the Civic Engagement Commission, which was created by a 2018 referendum to initiate a citywide participatory budgeting process (in addition to the participatory budgeting programs run by many City Councilmembers in their own districts).

“People themselves do know what is best, and they can arrive at conclusions that work for the community and that are legislatively feasible,” said Benjamin Solotaire, senior adviser at the Civic Engagement Commission, who helped to integrate the assembly component into The People’s Money process. “It is really the lived experience that makes it feasible.”

New York and beyond

The climax of the Hunter College assembly’s campus “garbage tour” was a visit to the trash compactor on East 67th Street, where delegates watched as custodians on a high platform emptied trash from the entire campus into a massive metal container before it was carted away by the Sanitation Department. The goal was to see the problem up close.

Rozen Kapadia, a junior studying psychology, said her role on the assembly was already changing her mindset. “I do feel responsible,” she said. “I feel expected to bring about change.”

Over the two months that followed, the delegates worked to achieve it. They sought information from outside experts. They met every Friday to learn, deliberate and ideate. A public forum on May 15 included the broader campus community. Last week, the assembly developed and voted on nine recommendations, passing seven with a strong consensus. Those include expanding the compost program, barring on-campus vendors from distributing styrofoam and single-use plastics, and redesigning and relocating trash receptacles to encourage recycling.

The results will be discussed with the administration over the summer. Then nine students will serve as post-assembly fellows, working with campus leadership to implement the proposals.

“This was a great experience,” said Hunter junior Tariq Bradshaw after the vote. “I think I’ll always look back on this time, because I never thought I would do anything like this before. It was great being part of something bigger.”

It’s unclear whether supporting citizens assemblies is a priority for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration; neither the mayor nor his new Office of Mass Engagement answered questions about it. (OME’s first initiative is quite different: a campaign to recruit tenants to testify at upcoming rent stabilization hearings.)

Across the country, meanwhile, citizens assemblies are proliferating. This spring, Los Angeles used one as part of a city charter review, as did Lexington, Kentucky. Akron, Ohio, just conducted a citizens assembly on housing; Raleigh, North Carolina, held one focused on urban planning. Beginning in July, Connecticut will hold a statewide citizens assembly on property taxes.

Abroad, notable examples include the standing assemblies of Paris and East Belgium — whose recommendations have been adopted into law — and the 2016 Irish assembly that led the country to legalize abortion two years later.

Citizens assemblies are not infallible. French President Emmanuel Macron, for example, overpromised and underdelivered on implementing the French Citizens Convention on Climate six years ago.

Still, the model may prove well suited to society’s emerging problems. Two western communities have already launched assemblies on artificial intelligence: the Central Oregon Community Solutions Assembly on AI and the Snohomish County, Washington Civic Assembly.

If elected, Lander said, he’d love to do the same in New York. A citizens assembly could “transform an extractive, profit-driven model of artificial intelligence by using a democratic model for amplifying our collective intelligence,” he said.

Known as the Survivors First Act, the legislation would bar the state from evaluating what’s known as “contributory conduct” to determine if victims are eligible for funds. Nearly all states have similar restrictions, based on factors like whether the victim was accused of using or selling drugs, fighting with the person who injured them, or being in a gang at the time of the crime.

The state Office of Victim Services decides who receives the funds, using information from law enforcement, prosecutors, claimants, and other sources. In 2024, the office denied roughly 40 percent of the nearly 8,000 claims it ruled on for reasons including incomplete applications and ineligible crimes. Of those, 16 denials included contributory conduct, the office said.

Research has shown that because victim compensation decisions rely on subjective assessments, they can also lead to racial disparities. In a 2024 analysis, University of Michigan professor Jeremy Levine found that Black New Yorkers represented 31 percent of all victim compensation claims in the state — but made up 53 percent of claims denied for contributory conduct. The disparity was particularly acute for Black men, who represented 14 percent of New York claims but 47 percent of contributory conduct denials.

Kira Shepherd, vice president of organizing and policy at Common Justice, a victim services organization that helped spearhead the bill, said these patterns are harmful for survivors in the moment — and down the line. “If they’re denied because they’re criminalized, they aren’t getting the healing they need, and that just causes the cycle of violence to continue,” she said.

The bill, sponsored by state Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman, would strike the provision in the law that instructs the Office of Victim Services to use contributory conduct to deny claims or reduce awards, making New York one of the first states to do so. It would also make it illegal for the state to award survivors less money if they privately fundraised for funeral or medical expenses, as it does now. And it would require the office to better publicize itself and to publish regular statistics on applications for aid, rejections, and the reasons it denies applications.

Survivors and their families are sometimes unaware that they’re eligible for victim compensation or confused by the rules around it.

In 2024, Dylan Marino, 21, was stabbed to death by a worker in a Queens corner store. Grainy security camera footage shows the bodega worker chasing Marino, and then Marino chasing him back before staggering away.

The Office of Victim Services sent a funeral home $3,000 for his services, according to Marino’s mother, Kate Dessommes. Months later, however, the agency tried to claw it back without fully explaining why.

“Our investigation of this claim shows that the victim’s own actions contributed to his/her death,” the office wrote in a letter to Dessommes. “The victim cannot be considered an innocent victim of crime and is not eligible for an award.”

Dessommes attributes the denial to what she says police told her: that Marino had stolen a beer from the corner store. After she appealed, the agency attributed it to the fact that the worker wasn’t charged in the crime, though the statute does not require that.

To Dessommes, the letter felt like another emotional blow. “It added so much more stress to something that was already horrible,” she said through tears.

The Office of Victim Services said it could not “comment on an individual claim due to strict confidentiality laws,” but that there may be “circumstances in which OVS is limited in the information it can disclose, such as when doing so could affect an ongoing investigation or prosecution.”

Mika Dashman, founding director of the Restorative Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for non-punitive responses to harm, was working with Dessommes when she received the denial. She helped her push the state to stop trying to recoup the funding, which it eventually did.

“I couldn’t believe that an agency that was created to support victims of crime would use blaming language like that,” Dashman said. “The state should not be in the business of arbitrarily determining who is an ‘innocent’ victim and who is a ‘deserving’ victim.”

Aaron Cagwin, a spokesperson for the Office of Victim Services, said the agency reviews each claim “based on the information available at the time.”

“While OVS was required to follow the law as written,” he added, “the agency has always approached its work with a focus on supporting victims and survivors and ensuring that claims were reviewed as thoroughly as possible.”

Advocates and lawmakers have successfully pushed the agency to improve access to victim compensation. In 2023, they fought to remove a requirement that survivors report crimes to the police to qualify for aid. And in 2025, the state budget altered the contributory conduct provision so it can no longer be used against homicide victims, like Marino. In all other cases, however, the conduct restrictions still stand.

“If my child dies, they can no longer be blamed” in a way that denies or reduces compensation, explained Robert Gipson II, a New York attorney and former fellow at Giffords Law Center. But if “I catch a stray bullet and live,” he said, the Office of Victim Services “can still make an arbitrary determination about why I was shot.”

That’s where this year’s bill comes in. If signed, New York would become the second state, after Maryland, to completely eliminate contributory conduct as a factor in victim compensation, according to Gipson, who drafted the legislation and worked with the sponsors’ offices, Common Justice, Safe Horizon, and other groups to get it passed.

The bill passed both legislative chambers unanimously. The legislature has until December to send it to Governor Kathy Hochul, who can sign or veto it.

The governor’s office did not answer questions about whether she plans to sign the bill. In a statement, Jess D’Amelia, a spokesperson for Hochul, said the governor “has championed efforts to improve the state’s response to gun violence, sexual assault, domestic violence, gender-based violence and sex trafficking.”

“Governor Hochul remains committed to supporting victims and survivors of all crimes and will review this legislation,” she said.

For Shepherd of Common Justice, the bill’s passage is gratifying. “No one has really looked at these policies to make sure that they were equitable,” she said. “I believe that conversation is now happening.”

She hailed the effort — now called the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative (RMAPI) — as an innovative model that could one day be replicated statewide.

For months, a task force led by top lawmakers and spearheaded by the United Way of Greater Rochester had been taking shape. Soon after going public, it announced an ambitious goal: slashing the area’s poverty rates in half by 2030. Key to that effort was a cutting-edge website that would seamlessly connect the region’s residents to a variety of social services, acting as a one-stop shop for everything from emergency housing to food assistance and mental health care. By increasing coordination among providers, proponents explained, it could eliminate the bureaucracy of getting help — providing a more holistic, user-friendly experience.

But the task force faced early stumbles. Its first leader resigned in 2020 amid criticism. Now, more than a decade since its launch, some are calling RMAPI — along with MyWayFinder, the website it kickstarted — an expensive flop.

“I’m not convinced an app that tells me where a food pantry is is solving the problem that needs to be solved,” Monroe County legislator Rachel Barnhart said of MyWayfinder, which came online in 2024 and officially launched in 2025. “The problem is when people actually go and apply to the government for the services they’re eligible for, and they encounter extreme barriers and red tape.”

The state has pumped at least $25 million into the MyWayFinder website, which took over eight years to develop. State documents billed the website as a transformative hub that would provide a “360-degree” view of each of Rochester’s 150,000 impoverished residents, allowing clients to transition from “crisis to stable to thriving” with a vast network of providers closely tracking their needs and the services they’re receiving.

Amy D’Amico, a nonprofit consultant and local housing advocate, has referred several people to the platform to easily locate resources, including a trans person who needed help identifying a health provider.

“I think there’s a significant gap in our community and elsewhere between the health domain and the housing domain,” D’Amico said. “These are systems that just don’t talk to each other.” MyWayFinder is one of many potential solutions that could help bridge that divide, she said.

But overall, uptake has been lackluster. As of June 2026, MyWayFinder has over 2,000 registered client users — a fraction of the 150,000 sign-ups promised upon the website’s rollout. Similarly, only 48 organizations are considered “Connected Provider Organizations,” which actively receive referrals from the site, far short of the 300 providers envisioned upon rollout in state contract documents — limiting the website’s ability to function as a one-stop shop.

The website’s current operator denied that the site had failed to reach its original goals and said that all providers listed on the website are able to utilize the network and are “reachable” through the platform, even if they don’t receive website referrals.

Despite the tepid response, those running the platform have continued to seek more state dollars and are looking to expand MyWayFinder and spread the framework to other counties across New York. RMAPI has long since abandoned its ambitious target of halving local poverty rates and has pivoted to a broader set of metrics that, according to its executive director, “better reflect the root causes of poverty” and don’t rely on a single measure. RMAPI has also stepped away from MyWayFinder and transferred operation of the platform to another group.

MyWayFinder’s goal of streamlining social services couldn’t come at a more critical time. Historic federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance are estimated to result in hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers losing their benefits in the months and years to come — placing a larger burden on nonprofit providers to fill the gaps.

These cuts are likely to be especially devastating in Rochester, where nearly 30 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line and roughly 40 percent of children live in poverty.

Rochester was once a bustling hub for some of America’s most iconic brands, including Xerox and Kodak, but decades of declines in manufacturing have taken their toll on the workforce, which has never recovered. And that was before the recent spate of federal cuts to safety net programs under the Trump administration.

The region also has a history of higher-than-average denial rates for programs like food assistance and punitive sanctions for those who fail to meet stringent requirements for drug or alcohol programs, Barnhart says.

But while MyWayFinder was built using state funds, it was never intended to connect users with the state or county agencies responsible for administering public benefits — which some critics say hamstrings the platform’s ability to ease the lives of underserved residents.

It can also be impractical, said Anna Valeria, CEO of Open Door Mission, the region’s largest housing provider. Open Door is among the majority of organizations listed on MyWayFinder that are not fully connected into the platform.

“It’s wonderful in theory, but the reality is for those of us doing the frontline work, it’s another layer to add,” said Valeria.

The platform connects directly with 48 providers, allowing users to request referrals for help such as finding a shelter or child care. But when MyWayFinder users click on a listing to Open Door or other nonprofits that aren’t fully connected, they are prompted to call or email directly for help, which Barnhart said makes the platform more akin to an online phone directory than the innovative one-stop shop promised in state documents.

Valeria said Open Door has no plans to fully connect because it has already fine-tuned its own intake process. Several other community partners that facilitate emergency and transitional housing placements for Open Door have also declined to connect, Valeria said, driving down the platform’s ability to improve coordination among providers.

She questioned why the state would bankroll MyWayFinder instead of directly supporting nonprofits at a time when many are struggling. In 2024, the United Way of Greater Rochester was criticized by local nonprofits after it announced funding changes that would significantly reduce its longtime support for them.

Barnhart raised similar concerns, calling MyWayFinder a costly attempt at unifying providers into a central system instead of investing in actual services. “We have other nonprofit organizations that essentially do the same exact work and don’t need these dollars from taxpayers,” Barnhart said of MyWayFinder and RMAPI. “We seem to be spending money to fund bureaucracy instead of putting money directly into the hands of people.”

The United Way of Greater Rochester is one of the larger nonprofits in the region, with a reported $183 million in assets as of 2024.

The organization is part of a national United Way network of affiliates that raise money through workplace giving programs and direct those donations to local nonprofits like homeless shelters and food pantries. Each United Way is independently run and operated, and many, like the Greater Rochester chapter, do not provide direct services to the public.

The organization’s relationship with RMAPI has raised questions. Nearly all of the state funds directed to the task force or MyWayFinder were issued as legislative awards, a process in which lawmakers direct grants to specific institutions. The practice has been flagged by open government advocates for inadequate oversight that “invites misuse and corruption.”

Unlike regular state contracts — which are often issued after a competitive bidding process and contain financial safeguards — agencies have limited powers to oversee legislative awards. Neither of the state agencies named on the grants that supported RMAPI and MyWayFinder were able to provide details about how the money was spent, and both noted that they had no control over the grants.

A tangled ownership structure also makes tracking spending more difficult. The state grants were entrusted to the United Way of Greater Rochester, which has housed RMAPI since the task force formed in 2015. All of RMAPI’s employees are United Way of Greater Rochester employees.

While RMAPI spearheaded the development of MyWayFinder, it has since transferred operation of the platform to another organization called TogetherNow, which also started off as part of the United Way of Greater Rochester. TogetherNow spun off into its own nonprofit organization earlier this year.

John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany said MyWayFinder’s transfer to a new operator raises questions about potential misuse of state dollars, especially if TogetherNow intends to expand the platform beyond the region. He recommended that the state open a financial probe into the matter.

The United Way of Greater Rochester charged the state $1.2 million per year to manage a five-year grant on RMAPI’s behalf while it was developing MyWayFinder but declined to share a breakdown of how it spent the $6 million total. State documents show an unspecified part of the annual fee went toward the salaries of United Way of Greater Rochester employees not directly involved in either RMAPI or MyWayFinder, such as CEO Jaime Saunders. Recent tax filings show Saunders earned over $365,000 annually as the nonprofit’s top executive in 2024.

United Way of Greater Rochester declined an interview request and responded to only some questions from New York Focus.

RMAPI Executive Director Aqua Porter said her task force is independent from United Way of Greater Rochester, despite the fact that she is listed in tax filings as an employee of the nonprofit. Porter said RMAPI’s budget over the past five years has hovered around $1 million annually, with state dollars accounting for as little as a third of overall funding at times. She declined to provide a full accounting of all state dollars RMAPI has received since 2015.

Because RMAPI is not a separate entity, it is not subject to IRS public reporting rules for nonprofits. “No matter the funding sources, RMAPI has always been an effective and deeply responsible steward of any money we receive,” Porter wrote in an email.

Porter’s low six-figure salary was among 18 United Way of Greater Rochester positions funded by state grants earmarked for the development of MyWayFinder, according to state records. She has served as head of RMAPI since 2020, taking over when the group’s last leader resigned after concerns from community members about the task force’s effectiveness turned personal, according to the Rochester Beacon.

Like United Way of Rochester, RMAPI does not provide direct services to the public. Its main function is convening a steering committee that includes several prominent lawmakers and local politicians, though it does not identify as a think tank or a lobbying group and is not subject to state ethics rules.

Congressman Joe Morelle — often described as the architect behind RMAPI’s creation in 2015, when he served as a state assemblymember — did not respond to requests for comment. Morelle has been a fixture at RMAPI events, attending a celebration for MyWayFinder last summer.

Asked about RMAPI’s legacy, Porter pointed to the group’s advocacy for policy changes such as the Empire State child tax credit, raising the state’s minimum wage, and a pilot run of Rochester’s Guaranteed Basic Income program. “RMAPI has brought to Rochester an element that had not previously existed, a central organization that sets common goals and leads the hard work,” she wrote in an email. “While systemic change takes time, we can see the results.”

Laura Gustin, executive director at TogetherNow, which now runs MyWayFinder, wrote in an email that her organization has set a new target to fully connect 15 percent of all services listed on MyWayFinder by 2028. As of June 2026, an impact tracker on MyWayFinder indicated 125 out of 3,361 total services listed on the platform – or fewer than 4 percent — are fully connected.

Gustin pointed out that MyWayFinder has been used over 200,000 times by more than 40,000 unique users and has a growing list of partner organizations. She noted that her staff have trained over 1,100 service providers to use MyWayFinder, but didn’t respond to follow-up questions about why she thinks relatively few have chosen to fully connect to the platform.

Keeping MyWayFinder up and running for its relatively small user base isn’t cheap. Gustin said that annual licensing fees for the website currently cost $1.4 million. It’s not clear whether state funds are footing this bill. Neither Porter nor Gustin provided more details about these ongoing fees. The platform itself was designed by IBM, which was hired by United Way of Greater Rochester as a subcontractor using state grant money.

Some community members remain hopeful that MyWayFinder could represent a promising new solution moving forward.

The platform has helped local residents navigate new federal changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps. In March, new work requirements went into effect for thousands of Monroe County residents who rely on food assistance. The county directed SNAP households to a screening tool on MyWayFinder, which helped them identify if they were subject to the new mandate using a questionnaire.

The platform and RMAPI continue to receive strong political support.

Among RMAPI’s most enduring supporters is Assemblymember Harry Bronson, who represents Rochester and has served on the task force’s steering committee since 2015.

Bronson’s office declined to provide Focus with a full accounting of all state money the assemblymember has directed to the task force, but press releases and agency records indicate he is responsible for shepherding at least $10.5 million to the group.

“The funds I have requested for RMAPI’s continued work bolsters their ability to do outreach, retain staff and facilitate vital community collaboration necessary for our area to persist in addressing poverty and creating upward mobility,” he wrote in a statement. “One of the most significant successes of RMAPI has been in raising awareness that poverty does not only occur in the City of Rochester, as is commonly believed, but also affects those living in the surrounding rural and suburban areas of Monroe County.”

Bronson was among those who attended a 2023 RMAPI event where Rochester Mayor Malik Evans spoke positively of the group’s efforts, calling it “a framework for change that is bold in ambition yet constructive in scope to confront the single greatest challenge of our entire region.” Monroe County Executive Adam Bello said RMAPI’s efforts had helped make the region “more prosperous and equitable.” Neither responded to requests for comment from New York Focus.

Some advocates say that raising awareness and fully connecting clients to a few dozen providers falls far short of RMAPI’s original goals.

While Valeria of Open Door welcomed RMAPI with hope back in 2015, she said she has yet to see measurable outcomes from the group’s efforts over the past decade.

“We get lost in the aspiration,” she said.

When someone sues the state government, they must bring their case to the Court of Claims. Yet to file a case there, they need to know the exact date, time, and place where a state official harmed them. For the second year in a row, the state Senate has passed a bill that would lift those requirements in cases involving allegations of sexual assault, while the Assembly has failed to advance it.

At a press conference Tuesday, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, its prime Assembly sponsor, urged lawmakers to pass the bill.

“This is not something that should wait until next year, because people are suffering now,” she said. “People’s cases are going to vanish.”

The 1,600 cases stem from the Adult Survivors Act, a law that temporarily opened the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging sexual abuse against adults. An earlier law, the Child Victims Act, opened a similar window for people allegedly abused as children. Lawmakers involved with the passage of those bills say they never meant for filing requirements to stymie cases.

In other civil courts — like the state’s supreme courts, where hundreds of women have filed Adult Survivors Act suits against New York City over sexual abuse by Rikers Island jail staff — claimants can initiate cases by providing limited details, then gather more evidence through discovery. But in cases filed against New York state, judges have ruled that they need to share more information at the outset.

“Everything we know about the psychology of sexual abuse and rape trauma is that survivors actively suppress the memories of the abuse, and that they have difficulty recalling small details about it,” said Konstantin Yelisavetskiy, a partner at the law firm Slater Slater Schulman, which represents about 1,200 of the claimants suing the state. It’s also inherently difficult, he said, for any incarcerated person to keep precise track of time in prison.

“When you take those two things and you put them together,” he added, it’s an even greater burden. “So to not remove this harsh, inhumane requirement is effectively blocking their ability to attain justice,” he said.

In a consequential decision last year, the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, ordered the Court of Claims to dismiss a case filed under the Child Victims Act because the claimant could not provide a precise date for alleged abuse. The case set the bar for how to apply the strict requirements to the thousands of old cases filed under the two laws.

The proposed state law, which passed the Senate last month by a 57–3 margin, would remove those requirements for pending cases and apply retroactively to cases dismissed under the current filing requirement that are subject to potential appeal.

Last year, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s office expressed concerns over the degree to which the bill would relax pleading standards, and about changing the law in a way that would impact pending cases, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Heastie’s office, which has remained noncommittal about the bill this year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During a court conference last October, attorneys for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said the state was planning to ask judges to throw out 500 cases based on the filing requirements, according to Yelisavetskiy and another attorney, who collectively represent hundreds of women in the cases. Attorney General Letitia James’s office, which represents DOCCS, has sought dismissal of cases based on the Court of Claims filing requirements. Her office did not immediately respond to a question about whether she supports the bill.

Hochul’s office said the governor “remains committed to supporting victims and survivors of sexual assault and will review all legislation that passes both houses of the state legislature.”

Meanwhile, DOCCS, a Hochul administration agency represented by James’s office, has sought to use the current filing requirements to its legal advantage.

In one case, for instance, James’s office convinced a judge to throw out a case because the claim included the wrong date of the alleged abuse — a mistake also included in the prison agency’s own records.

In another, James’s office asked a judge to toss a case because DOCCS could not locate a record of an alleged abuser — even though New York Focus was able to quickly locate the record, leading James’s office to withdraw its request.

Last year, the legislature passed a bill relaxing the pleading standard for sexual assault cases going forward. But it did not apply retroactively, so it did not cover cases filed under the Child Victims and Adult Survivors laws.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > How Generous Partners Are Helping Saprea Raise Child Sexual Abuse Awareness 

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How Generous Partners Are Helping Saprea Raise Child Sexual Abuse Awareness 

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How Generous Partners Are Helping Saprea Raise Child Sexual Abuse Awareness 

Over the past year, Saprea’s donors and partners—including YESCO and the RLC Family Foundation—have made it possible to expand awareness of child sexual abuse through impactful billboard campaigns, reaching communities with messages of prevention, hope, and healing.

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Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics

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Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

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Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

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Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics

Starting conversations about online safety and sextortion with teens can feel difficult. These practical conversation prompts help parents discuss sensitive topics, recognize red flags, and build trust so young people feel safe asking for help when they need it.

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What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

Learn why children and teens often don’t report grooming, the manipulative tactics abusers use, and how caregivers can create safe, supportive environments to help survivors speak up and heal.

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The post Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics

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Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics

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Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics

Starting conversations about online safety and sextortion with teens can feel difficult. These practical conversation prompts help parents discuss sensitive topics, recognize red flags, and build trust so young people feel safe asking for help when they need it.

Read this article

Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

Sextortion often begins on platforms teens use most, including social media, gaming chats, livestreams, and anonymous messaging apps. Understanding these high-risk spaces and teaching young people to recognize red flags can help parents protect them from online predators.

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What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

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The post Conversation Prompts for Parents: Talking About Sensitive Topics appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > What is Online Grooming? Understanding Grooming in the Digital Age

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What is Online Grooming? Understanding Grooming in the Digital Age

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What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

Learn why children and teens often don’t report grooming, the manipulative tactics abusers use, and how caregivers can create safe, supportive environments to help survivors speak up and heal.

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What is Online Grooming? Understanding Grooming in the Digital Age

Online grooming is the process of building trust with a child or teen online for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Learn how predators operate on digital platforms, warning signs to look for, and how parents can protect and support their children.

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

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What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

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What Stops Children from Reporting Grooming: Understanding Barriers to Disclosure

Learn why children and teens often don’t report grooming, the manipulative tactics abusers use, and how caregivers can create safe, supportive environments to help survivors speak up and heal.

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Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

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By Joan Tabachnick

We are excited to share an important opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field of sexual abuse prevention. Sexual Abuse is now inviting submissions for a special issue on “What Works in the Prevention of Sexual Abuse?”

This issue, guest edited by Kieran McCartan, Ryan T. Shields, and Joan Tabachnick, will shine a spotlight on primary perpetration prevention—programs, policies, and practices designed to stop sexual abuse before anyone is harmed.

Join the Conversation

By bringing together evidence, practice, and innovation, this special issue aims to build a stronger foundation to answer the vital question: What truly works to prevent the perpetration of sexual abuse?

We invite researchers, practitioners, and thought leaders from around the world to contribute to this conversation by submitting a Letter of Intent by September 25, 2025.

Why This Special Issue Matters

Preventing the perpetration of sexual abuse is one of the most critical yet challenging areas of work. Unlike treatment or response strategies, primary prevention often requires proving that “something didn’t happen”—an outcome that can be difficult to measure.

Yet across the globe, innovative programs, interventions, and policies are being developed to reduce risk, strengthen protective factors, and create safer communities. This special issue seeks to bring those successes, research, evaluations, and innovations together in one place to help shape the future of perpetration prevention efforts.

Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions that critically examine and expand our understanding of primary perpetration prevention, including but not limited to:

• Evidence of success in primary perpetration prevention programs, including meaningful outcome measures.
• Lessons learned from past prevention efforts—and how they can guide the future.
• Risk and protective factors for first-time perpetration of sexual abuse.
• The role of public messaging, policy, and science in prevention.
• Implementation challenges: overcoming politics, stigma, and sustainability issues.
• Global perspectives: cultural and regional insights that broaden the scope of prevention.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Aniss Benelmouffok, Managing Editor of Sexual Abuse: aniss@atsa.com

Together, we can deepen the science of prevention, learn from one another, and build safer futures for individuals, families, and communities worldwide.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Before Letting Your Child Have a Sleepover

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Before Letting Your Child Have a Sleepover

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

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Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > What to do if a Sex Offender Moves to Your Neighborhood?

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What to do if a Sex Offender Moves to Your Neighborhood?

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Male Sexual Abuse

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Male Sexual Abuse

About the Author

Eric Rivas

SEO/Web Analyst

Eric joined Saprea at the end of 2021 as the SEO/Web Analyst. He received a BS in marketing, a Professional Sales Certificate, and an AS in university studies from Utah Valley University, where he is currently enrolled in the MBA program. Before making the jump to the nonprofit sector, he worked in start-up, agency, and corporate marketing positions. In his free time he enjoys traveling with his wife, reading, and volunteering in the community.

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

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Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

How Saprea Can Help Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

At Saprea, our mission includes teaching others about the effects of child sexual abuse, how to create healthier behavioral patterns, and how to manage survival responses when they are not needed. Using the most up-to-date research, Saprea has created many resources for survivors of child sexual abuse and their supporters.

Saprea Retreat

The Saprea Retreat is a free, 4-day clinically informed experience followed by a self-guided online course specifically designed for women who were sexually abused as children or teenagers. The retreat has three purposes:

• One, to learn about how having a history of child sexual abuse can impact someone as an adult.
• Two, the opportunity to apply healing tools.
• Three, to build a community of support with other women who have have experienced something similar.

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Saprea Healing Webinar

The Saprea Healing Webinar is a free, 4.5-hour interactive, educational online experience designed to help women start their healing from home or for those unable to attend the retreat. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the effects of child sexual abuse, engage in group discussions to begin building a community of support, and mindfully connect with their bodies.

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Saprea Support Groups

The Saprea Support Groups are groups led by survivors for survivors with the goals of offering emotional safety, ensuring confidentiality, and creating a community of support with other women who have been through similar experiences.

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Saprea Online Resources

The Saprea Online Resources offer an extensive library of resources available to help survivors better understand the effects of child sexual abuse and how to begin or continue a healing journey.

About the Author

Sarah Burton, CMHC

Director of Clinical Outreach Services

Sarah earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Utah State University and her master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Phoenix. She has over 15 years of experience in the mental health field primarily working with women and adolescents. Sarah’s post-graduate training includes Motivational Interviewing, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Trauma-Focused Substance Abuse Treatment, and Psychodrama. Sarah has worked with women in a residential substance abuse treatment setting. This experience gave her the passion to assist women with acknowledging and honoring the healing power they have within themselves. She feels grateful and honored to be a part of Saprea’s mission.

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

Read this article

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The post Effects of Child Sexual Abuse appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse

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Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse

About the Author

Brian Walker

Research and Program Development Strategist

Brian is a Research and Program Development Strategist at Saprea. Brian spent over a decade of his career teaching high school social studies and serving in administrative capacities at a residential treatment center for teen boys who struggled with anxiety, depression, trauma, and learning disabilities. He has directly observed the effects of trauma and abuse as well as the healing that can come to both individuals and families. In addition to his full-time responsibilities, Brian has served as an accrediation evaluator for schools and as an aftercare coach for clients and families transitioning from intensive mental health treatment. Brian has enjoyed presenting regularly at academic, professional, and religious leadership conferences. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history teaching from Brigham Young University. You can find Brian often hiking the Utah mountain trails in search of spiritual enlightenment and photo opportunities or trying out a new recipe in his ambitious but under-stocked kitchen.

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Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

Like many of you, the stats of sexual abuse had never sunk in before all my loved ones shared their experiences, but then and now, these figures scream at me. I can no longer look the other way. I can’t discount the discomfort by saying the research must be wrong or that the research responses must have come from somewhere else and someone else.

Read this article

Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure

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Read this article

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The post Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse appeared first on Saprea.

To frame these ideas, she draws on two concepts:

     •    Memes and Memeplexes: Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, “memes” are self-replicating cultural units that spread and evolve like genes. Memeplexes—like religions and political ideologies—are networks of related memes.
     •    Mimetic Desire: Introduced by René Girard, this concept suggests we desire what others desire, emulating “models” in our social spheres. This can lead to rivalry and scapegoating.

Asparouhova proposes that if we take these two concepts as "canon," we can see how the internet has poured fuel on them. "Rather than ushering in an era of global peace, the internet made us leap at each other's throats," she says. 

 

What Are Anti-Memes?

Anti-memes are cultural ideas that resist spreading—often because they disrupt social harmony. Asparouhova writes, “Networks have a strong built-in immunity to anti-memes,” noting that these ideas tend to be suppressed because of their disruptive power.

Prevention—especially when it comes to sexual violence—is inherently antimemetic. Like disaster preparedness or gun violence prevention, it rarely garners sustained public or political support unless a recent tragedy has captured public attention. ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention offers a structured approach to breaking through this “immunity” and reshaping how we talk about sexual harm.

Asparouhova herself points to how prevention is deprioritized in public discourse and policy. Consider how media attention surges and fades after mass shootings—or how funding for disaster preparedness lags until catastrophe strikes. Prevention doesn’t spread easily because it requires uncomfortable conversations and long-term thinking—both of which challenge the fast-paced, reactive nature of contemporary communications.

The same is true for conversations about treating individuals who have caused sexual harm. These conversations demand we acknowledge the harm sexual abuse has caused, to consider the harm that may occur, and requires frameworks grounded in science that address its prevalence in our communities.

ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention

ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention is a guide for turning anti-memetic ideas into meaningful conversations. It encourages professionals to lead with values—to explain why they work with people who have sexually harmed others or are at risk to. It provides structure for conversations that highlight our shared goal: ending sexual violence.

Although designed for ATSA members, this roadmap is for anyone ready to talk about prevention with nuance and purpose. It:
     •    Emphasizes collaboration with individuals affected by trauma
     •    Draws on decades of clinical research and evidence-based practice
     •    Makes prevention the focal point of our work—not an afterthought

Why We Need Champions

So how do anti-memes break through? Asparouhova’s answer: Champions. These are people who know how to navigate complex systems and bring difficult ideas into broader conversations. Champions help anti-memes find traction beyond their niche communities.

She writes:
“But to the right champion, even the most labyrinthine system feels like an invitation to create something extraordinary... You will know it when looking at the problem makes your heart expand with possibilities, rather than shrink away.”

If you’re reading this, you might be that champion. Because prevention faces many challenges —we need people willing to carry the message.

A Final Note

The ideas in the roadmap aren’t always easy to share. They’re disruptive. They challenge deeply held beliefs. They’re anti-memes. But they also carry the potential to transform lives and communities.
 
This year, we've been highlighting Changemakers within the ATSA community. Members who have embraced the challenge of sharing the message of sexual abuse treatment and prevention to transform their communities.  I hope you'll join them in sharing these ideas with conviction, even when they're difficult to express. ATSA has your back with evidence-based resources and professional media support when needed—that's how change begins.