‘A HEART FOR HELPING’
Survivor helps Oklahoma City address domestic violence
Safe to say not many 19-year-olds are spending their free time at the police station volunteering to help the victims of rape and other forms of violence and abuse.
“That’s what started my career in victim services,” said Oklahoma City’s Kim Garrett-Funk. “I’ve always had a heart for helping. But I was also a survivor, and it was really important to pay it forward to other people.”
Garrett-Funk now lives in a state ranked as the worst in the nation in domestic violence.
According to a 2023 study by World Population Review, 49.1% of women and 40.7% of men in Oklahoma have been abused or are currently enduring domestic abuse. The study ranked Oklahoma as third in the nation for the number of women killed by men (single victim/single offender homicide), an increase from previous years.
Fortunately, Garrett-Funk said, she lives in a city that is willing to work on addressing the problem.
A big part of that effort is centered around Palomar, a nonprofit organization created to help victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. The group was founded by Garrett-Funk and her husband, Bob Funk Jr., in 2017.
The name was chosen because the palomar is considered the strongest and most reliable of all fishing knots.
Question: You first started helping victims of violence in Reno, Nevada?
Answer: I was born and raised in Reno, and I graduated from the University of Nevada at Reno with my bachelor’s and master’s in social work. I began volunteering at a crisis call center. I responded to sexual assault calls and helped provide advocacy at the hospital. And that’s what really started my career in victim services. Then I moved on to the Reno Police Department and worked on homicide cases, sex crimes, child abuse, any kind of violent crime. I would provide advocacy for the families.
You moved then to Oklahoma City?
Yes, my husband had some great work opportunities, so we moved 14 years ago. I missed the work I was doing and there was an amazing opportunity at the OKC Police Department to start their victim services unit. And that’s when I saw the need for building a collaborative approach. Families could come in, and they would be terrified. They were afraid they were going to be hurt that night. Some had physical injuries. They didn’t know where they were going to go. And about all we had to offer were a lot of pretty brochures ... go here for legal assistance ... go here for a protective order ... here for a forensic exam. There were a lot of great agencies, but they were inadvertently siloed.
And there was a better way?
I started doing research on ways to reduce barriers and create efficiencies for clients and found the family justice center model. It started in San Diego about 15 years earlier, and I approached command staff (in the police department) about the idea. They really liked it and said, “let’s bring out the experts and do a study tour of our community and then move from there.” It was pretty amazing. The police department took the lead on that. And we quickly saw that it was what survivors wanted – a coordinated response. And it’s what the professionals wanted, too. It’s just so counterproductive when you have to leave somebody a voice mail, and then they call you back later, when you’ve got other cases on your desk. At Palomar, you can literally just walk down the hall and you’ve got relationships with all the different agencies. You can get a quicker response and a better response.
So your approach is similar to triage in a medical setting, you try to determine the needs of those who come in and then send them to the
I would say historically it hasn’t been a priority of the state. It doesn’t even have a single line item in its budget for victim services, not through DHS or any other entity. The bulk of the agencies we work with are nonprofits that get their funding federally, and that has decreased 25% over the past five years. We really need state support. It’s a public safety issue, a public health issue. We’ve been asking and advocating and trying to garner state support, but we’re not there yet.