Not long after a 1993 survey confirmed violence against American women persists, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and allocated $800 million to target the problem.
So far, $21 million of the $355 milliondistributed nationwide has funded rape crisis centers, phone hot lines and police training in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
Ohio has reaped $10 million; Kentucky, $5.2 million; Indiana, $5.7 million.
The second-highest award in Ohio, for $154,289, went to Cincinnati's YWCA for the Protect Program, a telephone hot line for battered women and other female victims of violence.
Like President Clinton's COPS program to put 100,000 more police officers on the street by 2000, the VAWA Grants Program will be allocated through the turn of the century.
In Ohio, grants are administered by the state's Office of Criminal Justice Services, which requires that police, prosecutors and women's advocates collaborate on their grant application. ''It's to strengthen bonds and to encourage cooperative thinking among all parties from the beginning of the process,'' said Doug Moormann, spokesman for the agency.
Part of the 1994 crime bill, VAWA ordered interstate compacts be formed to enforce domestic-violence protective orders. Kentucky was the first state to receive federal dollars to devise a way to do it.
Representatives of Kentucky's Office of Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Services will work with Cincinnati women's advocates so a woman's order of protection is valid in both states.
Jane Prendergast contributed to this report.
