Monday, May 19, 2025
Each April, we recognize Sexual Assault Awareness Month in America — a time for our society to unite behind the mission of supporting survivors, educating communities, and refining the strategies and resources we dedicate to eradicating the scourge of sexual violence from our society.
However, with the sudden and devastating March 14 closure of the Safe Center, in Bethpage, fresh in our collective minds, this year’s observance was a reckoning here in Nassau County, and a wakeup call for the dangerously distracted county administration under which this essential safe haven closed its doors — an outcome that re-victimized people in their hour of greatest need.
Prior to its sudden closure, the Safe Center offered more than 5,000 of our most vulnerable residents a beacon of hope. It provided essential life-saving services for survivors of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and child abuse — including an advocate response program, in which trained volunteers traveled to emergency rooms to comfort survivors. It housed critical resources such as a fully staffed 24/7 crisis hotline and Nassau’s only dedicated shelter for domestic violence survivors, and furnished group counseling, mental health referrals, legal assistance and other essential resources.
To raise community awareness, the highly trained and specialized team of Safe Center staff and volunteers conducted extensive outreach through their “Enough Abuse” campaign, and worked closely with the County Legislature to host numerous workshops across the county.
The Safe Center was also an instrumental partner in ensuring that the perpetrators of heinous crimes were held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. In addition to working with law enforcement to protect victims, it operated an advocacy center that aided in child abuse prosecutions. In a 2024 Newsday profile commemorating the center’s 10-year anniversary, the Nassau district attorney’s office described it as “one of our closest allies in the county.”
All of that is gone now — leaving behind a vacuum in the matrix of critical services that has not yet been filled. What makes this especially alarming is the fact that this deficit in services could have been prevented.
Shortly after I was elected to the Legislature on Feb. 25, it became readily apparent to me that the Safe Center’s operations could be in jeopardy. There were significant concerns about its financial state and its ability to continue pursuing its mission. If we as legislators were privy to these conversations, there is no doubt that the administration of County Executive Bruce A. Blakeman was as well. This gave them the opportunity to either proactively confront the issues and address the concerns or, given the life-and-death nature of the center’s services, take the necessary emergency steps to ensure a seamless transition to a new provider.
Neither happened. The county administration’s response was to criticize the outgoing operator and convene a committee — neither of which provides immediate relief. And despite apparently fruitful conversations dating back to last fall to reassign contracts to Safe Horizon, the nation’s largest nonprofit provider of victim services, the county issued a request for interest on Feb. 26 — just weeks before the Safe Center’s doors ultimately closed — meaning that a new provider would not be up and running until well into the spring, even in a best-case scenario.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that half of American women, and a third of men, have experienced sexual harassment involving physical contact — and a quarter of women, and one in 26 men, have been the victims of rape or attempted rape. The repercussions for victims of sexual violence are significant: PTSD and self-medication through substance abuse, physical injuries, sexually transmitted infections, and an increased risk of future sexual violence.
There is no time for complacency or distraction among the leaders who have been entrusted by their constituents with combating the sexual-assault crisis. Until services are fully restored, the county administration must spare no expense and work without delay to get a new, highly qualified service provider up and running.
Once a new provider is in place, the administration must conduct extensive outreach to raise public awareness of the restoration of these resources — and immediately revise its protocols to prevent such a shocking and perilous lapse in critical services from ever happening again.
Olena Nicks, of Uniondale, represents Nassau County’s 2nd Legislative District.
