The Sexual Assault Center of Northeast Georgia's board of directors
decided Tuesday that the center's last day of operation will be July
31 because its $204,000 budget for fiscal year 2008 - down from the
current $350,000 budget - is not enough to pay staff and provide services.
"It's a sad day because the center offers so much needed support in
the community," board president Ben Rivers said Wednesday. "It will
leave a large void." Among other services, the 33-year-old sexual
assault center provides a 24-hour hotline, counseling, financial
assistance, and legal and medical advocacy for victims and their
families. "I think the victims have really benefited from all the
services we provided," Executive Director Nikki Nathan said. "It's
just so sad we're closing. We tried a long time to make a difference,
but we're at the end of the road. The fight is over."
The agency took two big hits when administrators learned that major
funding sources - the Children's Advocacy Centers of Georgia and
United Way of Northeast Georgia - would cut funding by $45,000.
Factored into the new budget was the chance that the state Department
of Human Resources won't renew a $67,000 sexual assault prevention
grant, because competition for the grant is tighter, with
organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
vying for money, Nathan said.
That grant ends Oct. 31, and the center could not continue without the
certainty of that funding, Nathan said. When the Children's Advocacy
Centers of Georgia conducted a five-year site visit in May, it found
several deficiencies, including that the Family Protection Center on
Lexington Road - where victims are examined and interviewed - wasn't a
true collaboration of law enforcement and other agencies, sexual
assault center officials said.
Investigators and prosecutors were not always sharing information and
cases with sexual assault center staff, who are supposed to be present
when children are examined and interviewed, the officials said.
"It could very well have been a turf issue," Rivers said. "What I do
know is that one of the findings of the CAC was that the bodies and
agencies were all in place, but the inter-agency cooperation was not."
Athens-Clarke Assistant Police Chief Alan Brown said the sexual
assault center had a history of financial problems that caused it to
redefine its mission. The agency always had difficulty raising funds,
he said, because sexual assault is not a "warm and fuzzy" cause that
draws donations.
The sexual assault center suffered a significant loss in 2005, when
Athens-Clarke County commissioners decided not to give the center a
share of Community Development Block Grants, which normally go toward
affordable housing. To make up for dwindling funding, the board cut
back on its payroll by laying off a full-time therapist. Directors
concluded the agency had overextended itself by providing costly
individual therapy, which was discontinued in favor of group
counseling sessions. For long-term therapy, the center began referring
victims elsewhere, such as to Family Counseling Services, the
Samaritan Counseling Center or licensed private therapists.
"I believe because of the financial strains (the center was) going
through, they no longer worked as cooperatively with us and other
agencies," Brown said. "My belief is relationships became strained and
there was not nearly as much interaction as there had been in the
past. They turned more inward, trying to repair or compensate for the
lack of funding."
Complicating matters, the sexual assault center went through three
executive directors in two years, Brown pointed out.
"It takes awhile to rebuild relationships when you get a new director,
and I don't think they were ever able to do that," he said.
Mosi Bayo, who now counsels sex offenders in Florida, said she
resigned as the sexual assault center's executive director in 2005
after serving 19 months because she was tired of fighting turf battles
without the backing of her board members. "Protocol calls for the DA's
office or law enforcement to contact the center to coordinate with
staff to set up forensic interviews" of victims, she said. "But in
Athens-Clarke County, they pick and choose when they follow protocol,
and the relationship (with the center) that was in place even before I
got there was not one based on respect for the center.
"I chose to resign rather than to put up with the lack of support from
the board in our battles with the different agencies that were
supposed to be partnering with us."
Whatever is to blame for the center's demise, an institution is
closing, one that began more than three decades ago and grew to serve
not only Athens-Clarke, but Oconee, Oglethorpe, Franklin, Hart, Elbert
and Madison counties.
The center traces its roots to the early 1970s, when a serial rapist
was terrorizing the Boulevard area of Athens, and a group of women in
that community formed a community patrol. That led to the creation in
1974 of the Rape Crisis Center, the state's first anti-sexual assault
organization and a founding member of the Georgia Network to End
Sexual Assault.
The organization's name was changed in 1990 to the Rape Crisis Center
of Northeast Georgia and received funding to open an office in Athens
to serve the seven-county region. Five years later, the center
partnered with the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners to provide forensic
examinations of victims, and in 1996 added the Child Advocacy Program.
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 061407
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