Victim Services
To be eligible for victim benefits, a person must be a victim of crime involving physical or threat of physical injury, emotional injury, or death, as a result of the crime.
Victims of crime may qualify for medical, emotional, and financial assistance due to a crime-related physical injury, threat of physical injury or death.
Family members of a victim of crime may also be eligible.
HEART4Victims
Online Services for Victims
VCP Online Application
Apply for compensation online with the CalVCB online application
If you are a victim of a crime that occurred in California, apply online on your computer, tablet,
or smartphone
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vPostalBox
Receive your crime-related mail in a safe, secure, and confidential way with a virtual mailbox
Learn how you can access your mail 24/7 from any smart device
MORE INFOOther services we offer
Appeals Assistance
HEART4Victims can help crime victims who applied for assistance in California (CalVCB) and have been denied expense requests.
You have the right to appeal.
If your California Victims Compensation Board (CalVCB) application or expense request(s) are recommended for denial and you or your attorney representative do not agree with staff’s recommendation, you have a right to file an appeal. Keep in mind that your appeal must be filed within 45 days of the date the CalVCB mailed the notice to deny the application and/or expense request. In some cases, if additional information is provided, the denial may be reconsidered immediately. Otherwise, most appeals are scheduled for a hearing before a Hearing Officer. This hearing gives you the opportunity to present information supporting your claim.
Our HEART4Victims volunteers can help you understand why your application and/or expense request was recommended to be denied and explain what you may do to resolve the issue.
Denial recommendations are often related to missing required information. For example, if a crime report was not available at the time your application was reviewed, staff may recommend denial of eligibility because they were unable to verify that you were a victim of a crime. However, if a crime report was submitted after the recommendation was made, the issue may now be resolved and your application can be re-evaluated.
Another example could be that staff was not able to verify with your employer that you were employed at the time you became a victim of a crime. This could result in a request for income loss to be recommended to be denied. In this case, you need to ask your employer to verify your employment and you would provide that information with your appeal.
Categories of victimization
In California, elders are defined as persons 65 years and older. Under California law, elder abuse can be both criminal and civil.
Criminal elder abuse occurs where any person who knows that a person is an elder and willfully causes or permits that elder to suffer, or inflicts unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering on the elder. It also covers situations where a person willfully causes or permits an elder to be placed in a situation in which elder’s health is endangered.
Civil law elder abuse means physical abuse, neglect, financial abuse, abandonment, isolation, abduction, or other treatment resulting in physical harm or pain or mental suffering to an elder. It also means the deprivation by a care custodian of goods or services that are necessary to avoid physical harm or mental suffering.
Examples of Elder Abuse:
- Abandonment: The desertion of an elder by someone who is a caregiver.
- Abduction: The removal, without the consent of the conservator, of a conservatee to another state.
- Financial Abuse: The illegal or unethical exploitation and/or use of an elder’s funds, property, or other assets.
- Isolation: The intentional prevention of an elder from receiving mail, telephone calls or visitors.
- Mental Suffering: The infliction of fear, agitation, confusion through threats, harassment or other forms of intimidating behavior.
- Neglect: The failure to fulfill a caretaking obligation such as assisting in personal hygiene, providing food, clothing or shelter, protecting an elder from health and safety hazards, or preventing malnutrition.
- Physical Abuse:The infliction of physical pain or injury, sexual assault or molestation, or use of physical or chemical restraints for punishment.
How to Recognize Elder Abuse
1. Possible Physical Abuse and Neglect Indicators: The following are some clues for recognizing signs of physical elder abuse.
- Unexplained weight loss, malnutrition and/or dehydration, bedsores.
- Unseen physical injury: Painful reaction when touched.
- Bruises, skin damage or broken bones.
2. Behavioral Indicators can include:
- Agitation
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Confusion or disorientation
- Defensiveness
- Depression
- Fear
- Helplessness
- Hesitation to talk openly
- Implausible stories
- Non responsiveness
- Withdrawal
3. Possible Relative or Caregiver Abuse Indicators:
- An elder may not be given the opportunity to speak for themself.
- Obvious absence of assistance, attitudes of indifference, or anger toward an elder by a family member or caregiver.
- Social isolation or restriction of activity of an elder.
- Conflicting accounts of incidents by the family or caregivers.
- Substance abuse by individual responsible for the care of an elder.
When you know about or even suspect Elder Abuse, REPORT IT.
In cases where an elder is at risk of immediate harm, CALL 911!
An assault is carried out when a threat of bodily harm is combined with an ability to cause harm which may result in either criminal and/or civil liability.
An assault and battery is the combination of two violent crimes:
- assault (the threat of violence)
- battery (physical violence).
For example, an assault is the attempt to instigate harmful and/or offensive contact with a person, or the threat to do so. Many times an assault is listed along with battery. However, assault is separate from battery. An assault refers to a situation where one person creates a fear of harm in another person. For example, when someone pulls their fist back as if to harm you and you believe you will be punched, this action may be considered an assault.
A sexual assault is any unwanted sexual touching of another person without their consent, is inflicted upon a person who is not capable of giving their consent because of their age or their physical or mental incapacity, or who places the assailant in a position of trust or authority. As a violent crime, sexual assault includes acts of rape, forced kissing or fondling, other non-consensual sexual acts, and child sexual abuse.
Almost any sexual behavior to which a person does not consent, that causes that person to feel uncomfortable, frightened or intimidated is considered sexual assault. Sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, sodomy, lascivious acts, indecent contact, and indecent exposure all are examples of sexual assault charges.
Tab ContentDomestic violence is a pattern of behaviors used by one person to maintain power and control over another person in an intimate relationship.
Domestic violence includes behaviors that physically harm, arouse fear, prevents a person from doing what they wish or force them to behave in ways they do not want. It includes the use of physical and sexual violence, threats and intimidation, emotional abuse and economic deprivation. Many of these different forms of domestic violence/abuse can be occurring at any one time within the same intimate relationship.
Some of the signs of a psychological or emotional abusive relationship include a person who:
Tells you that you can never do anything right
Shows extreme jealousy of your friends and time spent away
Keeps you or discourages you from seeing friends or family members
Insults, demeans or shames you with put-downs
Controls every penny spent in the household
Takes your money or refuses to give you money for necessary expenses
Looks at you or acts in ways that scare you
Controls who you see, where you go, or what you do
Prevents you from making your own decisions
Tells you that you are a bad parent or threatens to harm or take away your children
Prevents you from working or attending school
Destroys your property or threatens to hurt or kill your pets
Intimidates you with guns, knives or other weapons
Pressures you to have sex when you don’t want to or do things sexually you’re not comfortable with
Pressures you to use drugs or alcohol
Some signs of a physical abusive relationship include:
Pulling your hair, punching, slapping, kicking, biting or choking you.
Forbidding you from eating or sleeping.
Hurting you with weapons.
Preventing you from calling the police or seeking medical attention.
Harming your children.
Abandoning you in unfamiliar places.
Driving recklessly or dangerously when you are in the car with them.
Forcing you to use drugs or alcohol (especially if you’ve had a substance abuse problem in the past).
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of people for the purpose of slavery, sexual exploitation and forced labor. It includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, or deception, of the abuse of power for the purpose of exploitation or servitude.
The 3 most common types of human trafficking are sex trafficking, forced labor, and debt bondage. Forced labor, also known as involuntary servitude, is the biggest sector of trafficking in the world.
The more common examples of Human Trafficking:
- Forced prostitution
- Forced labor services
- Slavery practices
- Removal of organs
Since human trafficking is a crime that is hidden in plain sight, it is important to recognize some of the warning signs:
- Appearing malnourished.
- Showing signs of physical injuries and abuse.
- Avoiding eye contact, social interaction, and authority figures/law enforcement.
- Seeming to adhere to scripted or rehearsed responses in social interaction.
- Lacking official identification documents.
- Appearing destitute/lacking personal possessions.
- Working excessively long hours.
- Living at place of employment.
- Checking into hotels/motels with older males, and referring to those males as boyfriend or “daddy,” which is often street slang for pimp.
- Poor physical or dental health.
- Tattoos/ branding on the neck and/or lower back.
- Untreated sexually transmitted diseases.
- Small children serving in a family restaurant.
- Security measures that appear to keep people inside an establishment – barbed wire inside of a fence, bars covering the insides of windows.
- Not allowing people to go into public alone, or speak for themselves.