Crime Victims to Lose a Friend : Therapy: Non-profit center offers aid to victims of violence. But it will close March 1 because of delays in getting state funds.

For months after a burglar broke into Nancy Simon’s apartment, nightfall brought back uneasy memories of how the intruder abruptly woke her, bound her with shoelaces and stockings and beat her.

Often unable to sleep, Simon found solace and support with therapists at the Crime Victim Center of Los Angeles, a non-profit agency that provided therapy for more than 600 crime victims over a six-year period.

“At night if I needed to call the center, there was someone there to call me back,” she said.

But the center is closing its doors March 1--a victim of red tape that hurt the agency’s cash flow and of ambitious goals that stretched the agency’s resources to the limit. Simon and others treated at the center worry that its closing will deprive future crime victims of help that allowed them to cope with their fears and return to work and normality.

“It’s a very awful feeling,” Simon said. “They made so much growth. It’s sad to see there wasn’t enough money to keep it open.”

“That is a valuable resource for Los Angeles,” agreed Kathy Colobong, assistant director of the City Attorney’s Victim Assistance Program. “We will miss the services.”

Nancy Kless, a clinical social worker, founded the Crime Victim Center in 1984 to provide therapy and other assistance for victims of violent crime. Kless took out a $60,000 loan--co-signed by relatives--to launch the program, hoping it would survive on funds from the state’s Victims of Crime Program, which reimburses victims up to $46,000 for medical expenses, lost wages and other costs resulting from crimes.

Unlike other counseling programs, which specifically serve victims of rape, child abuse or domestic violence, the Crime Victim Center is open to victims of all violent crime. The mental health field has often ignored robbery and assault victims, for example, and such people “often slip through the cracks,” Kless said.

Kless decided to start the center after she was asked to translate at a Santa Monica hospital for a Latina who had been shot. The woman was fearful, distraught and withdrawn.

“I realized she had the same symptoms of a rape victim,” Kless said.

But just as the center started to grow--it handled more than 5,000 telephone calls from crime victims in six years--the state restitution program that supplied most of the center’s funds ran into troubles of its own.

A 1988 report by the state auditor general found the program was crippled by poor management and lengthy delays. It took the state Board of Control an average 231 days to process a claim, the report found. By law, the board was supposed to complete a claim in 90 days.

By September of 1988, the board had a backlog of 5,855 cases, said Jody Patel, a board spokeswoman in Sacramento.

The delays kept Kless and her small staff scrambling for money. About 30 therapists--psychologists and licensed counselors--who took referrals from the center continued to see clients despite the delays. “They put in hours and hours not knowing when they would get paid,” Kless said.

The Board of Control hired additional workers and the backlog was officially cleared last March. It now takes about 134 days to process a claim, although many are handled in less than 90 days, Patel said.

The turnaround did not come soon enough for the Crime Victim Center. It is waiting for more than $250,000 from the state. When the money arrives, it should leave the center’s books balanced.

But Kless admitted that she made mistakes as well.

“I should have spent all my time on fund-raising,” she said. The center also lost money by providing extra services, such as emergency food and transportation, not covered by the state. And the center served people who did not qualify for the state program.

Kless is hopeful, however, that Proyecto Latino, a separate program for Latinos started by the center, will survive. Richard Alarcon, a criminal justice analyst with Mayor Bradley’s office, said the city is trying to find a new sponsor for the project.

The center’s clients are still seeing their therapists, but no longer can rely on the center to handle paper work for reimbursements from the state.

Meanwhile, Kless packed up her belongings this week. She plans to start a consulting practice for private programs that deal with crime victims. To raise extra cash, the center is selling off its office furniture and most of its chairs, lamps and sofas carried price tags.

Looking back, Kless wonders if the center tried to do too much.

“Maybe,” she mused. “But how can you turn people away?”