_{Thumbnail photo: Courtesy of the North Coast Rape Crisis Team}

It took nearly nine months, but Amanda LeBlanc says she may have found a new home for the North Coast Rape Crisis Team’s Del Norte office.

LeBlanc, the nonprofit’s executive director, said her team reached out to their community partners and local realtors trying to find a new commercial space to lease. She looked at a space that may serve her team’s needs on Friday, but will need help to turn it into a safe space for children and adult survivors of sexual assault.

“I’m waiting for the final yes it’s yours, but what we will need help with absolutely are the construction costs because you’re not allowed to use state or federal grant moneys for construction,” LeBlanc told Redwood Voice Community News on Monday. “All of that is going to have to come out of general funds, which is unrestricted funds from individual donors or foundations or from our partners and, perhaps, the community in order to get it set up.”

The North Coast Rape Crisis Team was one of two organizations in the country to receive a $500,000 U.S. Office on Violence Against Women grant in 2024. Working with the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office, Crescent City Police Department, the Victim Witness/Assistance Center and other agencies, the North Coast Rape Crisis Team used those dollars to build up its Sexual Assault Response Team and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program.

The Rape Crisis Team also used those dollars to enhance its forensic interview program, called the Safe Haven Intervention Program, or SHIP, at its office at 983 3rd Street in Downtown Crescent City.

“My office got all made over to look like a beach town ‘cause we’re a beach town,” she said. “We have little stuffies — turtles and whales and octopuses — that are in a net hammock outside the room and they each get to take one home with them after we do a forensic interview.”

A forensic interview is a scripted 10-part interview that is conducted if a child or an adult with developmental delays has made a disclosure that they’ve experienced sexual abuse, LeBlanc said. It often takes a month or sometimes a year for them to make such a disclosure, she said.

“The idea is to treat their truth like DNA,” she said. “You want to be careful and as protective of what they need to say as you would be of a swab taken from someone’s mouth or something like that.”

The North Coast Rape Crisis Team’s Del Norte County office is also where advocates work with adult survivors or sexual abuse, LeBlanc said.  The grant supports both the SART and SHIP programs and has led to better evidence and more prosecutions, she said.

However, about nine months ago, the building’s owner told LeBlanc and her team that due to structural issues, they’d have to vacate their office so the floor could be fixed. LeBlanc said she initially thought the move was going to be temporary, but the owner has other plans with the building.

The North Coast Rape Crisis Team is currently working with between 30 and 50 survivors, adults and children, LeBlanc said. That includes taking on acute cases as well as those working their way through the criminal justice system. The North Coast Rape Crisis Team also offers peer counseling services and case management services to survivors who are overcoming sexualized violence, she said. 

The North Coast Rape Crisis Team is still operating out of their 3rd Street office, however, she said.

“He was very sweet,” LeBlanc said of her landlord, Troy Duncan, the owner of Red Sky Roofing. “He told us his wife said, ‘You leave those ladies alone!’ Our lease ends Sept. 30 (and) our plan is to move out of that space before that.”

On Monday, LeBlanc said it looks like the space she had seen on Friday will work out, but it needs work.

“We’re really looking forward to it, but we need an observation room, an interview room — we invested a lot in soundproofing because the kids were doing their interviews and they couldn’t and they could hear an echo of themselves and it made them self conscious — and new furniture,” she said. “All that stuff will need to be moved and then we’ll need to create the space we need.”

Until that space is ready, the North Coast Rape Crisis Team has a mobile forensic interview system it can use, LeBlanc said. Her organization purchased that system to be able to serve survivors who couldn’t leave their home.

“The exams will continue to take place at Sutter Coast,” she said. “And even if I have to take my laptop to Starbucks and use the library to do our counseling, we’ll figure it out. We have wonderful partners with law enforcement, Victim Witness and Public Health, if we really need something I feel more than comfortable asking.”

LeBlanc said finding a permanent space is important because she will be operating off of the Office on Violence Against Women grant for another year.  She said she’s writing more grants to continue those services, but she’s also working to not become grant dependent.

“They need to be built into the city and county protocols — if Amanda is not able to get more grants, who’s going to pay for this?” She said. “Because we are seeing a change. We are seeing growth and we are seeing care taken of survivors, and that’s really really important.”