What The Hell America!

A list of organizations that staffers are authorized to refer callers to has been stripped of specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a group that educates students about sex-based discrimination; and books about male-on-male or female-on-female sexual violence. The changes went into effect three months ago, a RAINN spokesperson told the Times.  

RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, one of the country’s largest crisis hotlines for survivors of sexual violence, which served 460,000 people in 2024. It also operates a federally funded hotline for military service members. The move to drop support for resources to help immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, groups that are at particular risk of facing sexual violence, has not gone over well with RAINN’s volunteers. 

In February, a group of those volunteers signed a letter urging the organization’s leaders to restore the prohibited resources, and sent another letter to RAINN’s board of directors sharing their concerns. In the second letter, the volunteers wrote, “When trans, queer, Black, brown, Asian and undocumented survivors come to the hotline in crisis, we are not allowed to provide them with the same level of supportive care as other survivors.”