Countywide : Rape Crisis Center to Close May 29

The board of directors at the county’s only rape crisis center has voted to close the facility in two weeks because of increasing debts.

The Rape and Sexual Abuse Center of Ventura County, which provided therapy for 100 victims of rape or sexual assault and a 24-hour hot line that fielded 160 to 180 calls a month, will close May 29, board Chairwoman Denise Brogna said.

“The agency has been delivering a very intensive service,” Brogna said of the center, based at the Charter Hospital in Thousand Oaks. “It had been operating at a deficit for a while.”

The hospital had granted the center use of an office complex rent-free for one year beginning in March.

But the center also was operating at a deficit of about $3,000 a month and recently incurred deep cuts in grants from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning and the United Way, Brogna said.

The center’s directors are hoping that the office of criminal justice and planning will use a $76,000 grant, earlier earmarked for the center, to re-establish the hot line and counseling services at Interface Child and Community Services in Camarillo, Brogna said.

But while the directors are seeking advice from the state attorney general and secretary of state on how to speed the grant award to Interface, the money will not be available until July 1, the start of the 1992-93 fiscal year, Brogna said.