> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.shayinformed.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Follow the fix: supporting crime victims in Kentuckiana - URL: https://www.shayinformed.com/follow-the-fix-supporting-crime-victims-in-kentuckiana/ - Published: 2026-08-25T14:10:43.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-25T14:10:43.000Z - Author: Shay McAlister - Tags: Shay Originals Journalism doesn't only have to highlight the problems. Sometimes, it feels good to highlight the solutions. This week: supporting victims of crime. --- *"I'm Shay McAlister, and this is Shay Informed: an independent, ad-free platform dedicated to honest journalism with compassion and clarity.* *Are you new here?* [*Sign up*](https://www.shayinformed.com/#/portal/signup) *for the free weekly newsletter or subscribe to support our mission and access behind-the-scenes content, podcasts, and in-depth stories reserved for paid subscribers.* --- Here's the thing about accountability journalism: it's almost entirely about what's broken. I've spent almost a decade reporting on Louisville's houseless crisis. Mostly recently, on the Arthur Street Hotel dissolving as a resource for people experiencing homelessness. I've dug into the Kentucky Medicaid funding crisis and what it means for disabled Kentuckians. I've covered how the state handles- and sometimes fails- child welfare cases. That's the job, and it matters. But it also means my reporting rarely tells you where to go if you want to actually *do* something about the problems I'm surfacing. So with Give for Good Louisville- the metro and Southern Indiana's big one-day giving event- happening next month on September 10th I wanted to do something a little different and a little more intentional. I wanted to go back through my own reporting, look at the issues that keep showing up, and find the people working the solutions side of those same problems, right here in Louisville. So that's what this series is: "Follow the fix" showcases a handful of organizations, grouped by the exact issues my reporting has recently revealed. Not a random list. Not only big organizations. Specifically, groups doing the work in the four areas that show up again and again in my reporting- homelessness and housing, child welfare, healthcare access, and crime victim support. If you want to read my first article, focused on homelessness, [you can find it here](https://www.shayinformed.com/follow-the-fix-a-new-series-highlighting-the-change-makers/). You can read my [second article on healthcare access here](https://www.shayinformed.com/follow-the-fix-whos-filling-the-gaps-in-louisville-healthcare/). This week, it's crime victim support. I talked to three organizations that show up after the worst has already happened, doing the long, unglamorous work of helping people survive what comes next. One quick disclosure: I serve on the board of The ACE Project, which runs Ace Healing. I'm including them here because their work fits squarely in this beat, but I wanted to be upfront about that connection. ## Comfort House Child Advocacy Center ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-25-at-9.54.15---AM.png) [Comfort House ](https://www.giveforgoodlouisville.org/organization/comfort-house-child-advocacy-center?ref=shayinformed.com)is a children's advocacy center serving Southern Indiana, just across the river from Louisville. The model dates back to the 1980s, when a district attorney in Huntsville, Alabama, sat down to talk to a child about an upcoming case and was told by the child's grandparent, in essence, "you're like the tenth person who's talked to this kid." That moment reshaped how communities investigate crimes against children. Comfort House brings law enforcement, the Department of Child Services, prosecutors, victim advocates, and medical professionals together under one roof, so a child who has experienced sexual abuse- or domestic violence, physical abuse, or witnessed a violent crime- tells their story once, to a trained forensic interviewer, in a recorded room, while the rest of the investigative team watches from another room. "The goal is that this kiddo has a one-stop experience," said Donna Lloyd, who leads Comfort House, rather than repeating the same trauma to a string of different officials across a string of different offices. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-25-at-9.54.55---AM.png) Most of Comfort House's funding is grant money tied to specific, restricted uses- client services, some salaries, part of the building's costs. Donations fill in exactly where grants can't: snacks and drinks for kids and families who show up at the center, comfort items, and the print materials Comfort House hands out through its school-based prevention program, Play It Safe, which reached almost 6,000 students last year at roughly $3 per child. "Those are the things we have more trouble funding," she said. "Is this something we're going to cut out next year because we don't have the funding for it?" That's the one thing your donation buys most directly: keeping that program, and the basics that make a child's worst day slightly more bearable, funded. ## Her Hope Kentucky ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-25-at-9.53.39---AM-1.png) Jennifer Beagle mugshots [Her Hope Kentucky](https://www.giveforgoodlouisville.org/organization/Her-Hope-Kentucky?ref=shayinformed.com) rescues, identifies, and rehabilitates victims of sex trafficking and sex abuse paired with addiction. Founder Jennifer Beagle has lived experience. I did a l[ong-form interview with her earlier this year](https://www.shayinformed.com/from-trafficked-to-trailblazer-the-woman-fighting-to-open-louisvilles-first-home-for-survivors/), walking through her entire story. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring! During our most recent conversation, Beagle laid out why the need in Kentucky is as severe as it is: the state ranks first in the nation for child abuse, third for opioid addiction, and in the top 10 for both familial and sex trafficking. During major events like Thunder Over Louisville or the Kentucky Derby, the number of sex ads posted online in the region can spike from a daily average of 500 to 1,000, up to as many as 20,000. Her Hope works through referrals- law enforcement, CPS, DCBS, and personal referrals- and beyond mentoring and trauma resource healing (including inside the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections), the support is deeply concrete. "We buy them furniture. We buy them household supplies. We pay a bill for them if they have a need for a bill. We just helped buy a car for someone," Beagle said. "We want to give them dignity. We want them to feel beautiful, because they are beautiful." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-25-at-10.04.05---AM.png) The organization's current, singular goal is opening its own long-term residential home- something Beagle says doesn't yet exist in a survivor-led model anywhere in Kentucky. "Survivor-led is a big deal, because it takes one to know one," she said. A property is currently under contract for the second time, and Her Hope is holding a gala on Friday, November 6, at the Frazier Museum to help push toward that goal. ## Ace Healing / Voices of Pain ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/survivors-retreat.jpg) Ace Healing, an initiative of [The ACE Project](https://www.giveforgoodlouisville.org/organization/the-ace-project?ref=shayinformed.com), supports survivors who've lost a loved one to gun violence. "We are a support system for the survivor," said Rose Smith, who leads the program. That looks like monthly in-person and virtual support meetings, annual retreats- held as far away as Tennessee and, for the program's 10th anniversary, Jamaica- workshops, and a podcast, Voices of Pain: Mothers with a Message, run by mothers who came through the program themselves. Ace Healing also runs on peer support: people who've lived through the same loss walk alongside newer survivors, some of whom eventually become facilitators themselves. Donations fund the meals served at monthly meetings, materials for retreats and workshops, sponsorships for mothers who can't otherwise afford to attend an outing, and something the organization calls grief wellness baskets- items delivered to someone newly impacted by gun violence, often including a printed keepsake image of their loved one. "Gun violence really affects us all," Smith said. "Even if you don't know someone that's been impacted, it still affects us all, because these people are walking around in your community... we've got to support their healing as well." ## How to help ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-25-at-10.10.08---AM.png) A children's advocacy center, a survivor-led anti-trafficking organization, and a peer support network for families who've lost someone to gun violence are all responding to the same basic truth: the system doesn't stop being hard on victims once the immediate crisis is over. It just changes shape. These three organizations are the people showing up for the part that comes after. If any of these resonated with you, all three are participating in Give for Good Louisville on September 10\. ## About Give for Good Louisville Give for Good Louisville is a celebration of the people, causes, and nonprofits that make our community better. On Thursday, September 10, [visit the organization's website ](https://www.giveforgoodlouisville.org/?ref=shayinformed.com)to discover 600+ local organizations and support the missions that matter most to you. *Like what you see? Learn more about Shay Informed* [*here*](https://www.shayinformed.com/welcome-to-shay-informed/)*! This is honest journalism with compassion and clarity.* ## ##