WA Voices was born on Saturday, July 16, 2016 when attorney Brad Meryhew hosted a gathering for 12 courageous people at the Pioneer Building in downtown Seattle. The group knew that our laws needed to be changed… but did not know how to make that happen. The founding members agreed to continue their conversation via email.

Our second meeting was held on January 27, 2018 and our group had grown to 20 members. We created a Google Group to foster member discussions.

Our third meeting was held at Pioneer Human Services in Seattle on February 24, 2018. During this meeting we selected a few leaders to work on building our group. We officially named our group Washington Voices.

During March & April of 2018, our leadership team developed our first mission statement and several members attended a Sex Offense Management Conference. We began to network with other stakeholders about the need for changes to sex offense policies and laws.

We held a #COMMUNITY BBQ on Saturday, May 26, 2018 at Pioneer Human Services. Janice Bellucci from ACSOL was a guest speaker. We polled the 25 people present to select our priorities: 1) abolish lifetime supervision, 2) abolish the registry, 3) address housing issues, 4) educate the public about our sex offense laws.

Our leadership team continued to network, build community, and develop our message. In August we held a second BBQ and launched our website. In the fall, a group of members began to speak with legislators about the need to address Lifetime Supervision.

Our community continued to grow, even if slowly. Our leadership made connections with national organizations such as NARSOL & Women Against the Registry, as well as several local nonprofits. In June, another small group called the Lifetime Supervision Relief Project attended a leadership meeting to discuss joining our two groups. On Friday, June 21, 2019, the two groups officially merged and began working on becoming a Washington State Nonprofit.

As for many people, 2020 proved to be a year of challenges. When COVID hit, we thought it was a crisis for our organization. Eventually, we learned that COVID was a blessing in that DOC was forced to allow people on supervision to be allowed to use the internet to Zoom for treatment and check-ins. We slowly started to get members from more remote parts of Washington. We also made it official: We filed for our 501c3 status with the IRS and became a public charity allowing people to donate to our organization.

2021 was an important year for WA Voices, but difficult to see the progress being made. Our board met monthly and asked the question: “What do we need to do to really change things?” It would take some time to answer the question… but our leadership concluded that we needed to raise money to hire a full time employee to help us “do” the work… so we began to raise money. By the end of the year, our membership was 88 people… far less than we had hoped for.

2022 was a new beginning for WA Voices. With donations from our community, and with financial support of a grant, we were able to hire our first employee. During the year, we launched 3 new programs: A weekly email called FINALLY FRIDAY, a Monthly Town Hall meeting via Zoom, and a monthly LSRP support group for people on Lifetime Supervision. Our membership grew to nearly 200 members by the end of the year.

We began 2023 with a new goal: to increase our statewide membership by sending mail to 19,000 people on the registry in Washington. Our community stepped up and helped us raise the $15,000 needed to send the mailer. Before our printed newsletter was sent the first week of December, we had 299 members… by the end of the month we had just over 600 members. By supporting our work financially, our community found that we had a stronger voice!

The success of our printed newsletter helped us to educate our community on HOW TO USE OUR VOICES. Many of our LSRP group members testified in Olympia in support of a bill to create a pathway off of lifetime supervision. While the bill did not pass, their efforts have increased awareness among the legislators of the need to change this policy. We ended the year by receiving a grant that multiplied the impact of our community’s financial support… and would help us launch a new program: THE REGISTRY RELIEF PROJECT. You can learn more about who can be removed from the registry on our Registry Relief Page.