New sexual assault crisis center opens in Phoenix, offering therapy and other services
New Life Center, a domestic violence shelter based in the West Valley, opened its first sexual assault crisis center in Phoenix on Tuesday for victims of rape, sexual violence and human trafficking.
"Unfortunately, sexual violence has no boundaries when we are talking about social economics, genders," said Myriah Mhoon, CEO of New Life Center. "This center is truly for anyone and everyone over the age of 18 that has experienced sexual violence, meaning men, women."
New Life Center received a $25,000 grant from the Arizona Republic-sponsored Season for Sharing campaign last year to support the organization's work with domestic violence survivors.
According to New Life Center, the new location will offer help from advocates who work on behalf of survivors of sexual assault, violence and human trafficking. Prevention and training departments will also operate at the Sexual Violence Healing Services Center.
A partnership with La Frontera Empact will allow the center to bring on a trauma healing therapist, who will be available for behavioral health needs for 20 to 40 hours per week.
The New Life Center Sexual Violence Healing Services Center will operate out of 3826 N. 3rd St, a stand-alone building in Phoenix with its own parking lot.
"Arizona does not have a stand-alone community-based service provider serving survivors of sexual violence," said Mhoon. "If someone wants to go to law enforcement and get an exam, we want to champion that and help them get to law enforcement, but if they don't or if they are not ready, we want to make sure that they have a really comfortable trauma-informed environment that they can come and present at and talk to an advocate or a therapist."
Data from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates that someone in the United States is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2015, 43.6% of women and 24.8% of men in the United States have experienced some form of contact with sexual violence in their lifetimes.
Based on those statistics, the New Life Center estimates that 757,000 women and 420,380 men in Maricopa County have been victims of sexual assault in their lifetime.
"Our research shows that three out of four sexual violence crimes are never reported to the police," said Amy Scanlon, outreach director of New Life Center in a statement.
"With so few sexual assaults being charged, and successfully prosecuted, there leaves a large swatch of survivors who likely never engage with formal systems (police, prosecution, medical, etc.) for services, and this is the population gap that Sexual Violence Healing Services Center aims to address," Scanlon added.
Scanlon will be managing the Sexual Violence Healing Services Center, which will operate with four full-time employees.
"There, you can talk to an advocate or we also have also have a therapist on-site to provide services to anyone that has experienced sexual violence and that needs to be believed, needs to be listened to, and needs that person as an advocate to be able to share resources, to make sure that they start the healing journey in a trauma-informed way," said Mhoon.
Reach breaking news reporter Haleigh Kochanski at hkochanski@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @HaleighKochans.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: New Phoenix crisis center will offer a wide range of services
