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Philadelphia’s only free sexual assault exam center was so strapped for funding last spring that Drexel University, its former operator, started drafting a closure announcement.

The school was facing financial strain of its own, and state funding to rape crisis nonprofits was tied up amid a prolonged budget impasse in Harrisburg. Emergency funding from the city was tangled in City Hall’s lengthy contracting process.

At the time, there was no plan for who would run the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center (PSARC), where roughly 300 rape survivors a year go for the sexual assault exams used to collect forensic evidence that are commonly known as “rape kits,” which often play a key role in prosecuting assaults.

Fast-forward to this month, when Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration announced the city’s public health department will assume all control of PSARC. Officials presented the news as the culmination of a careful, collaborative handoff, and one city staffer framed the transition in a news release as “seamless.”

But hundreds of emails obtained by The Inquirer through a right-to-know request and a review of public records tell a far messier story. The emails show that for more than a year the fate of PSARC lurched from one near-miss to the next and that a failed bid process forced the city to take over the center’s operations when no one else would.

Taken together, the records offer a granular view of how a critical piece of the city’s safety net for sexual assault survivors nearly broke. And they portray a chaotic process in which the city for months sought to transfer control of the center from Drexel to the nonprofit WOAR Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence, even as WOAR faced its own budgetary implosion.

Over the course of the last year, the exam center never shut its doors to patients. But it came close on several occasions, a collapse that would have had ripple effects in hospital emergency rooms across the region that typically route sexual assault patients to the center.

If PSARC suspended operations, hospitals would have to find specially trained staff — of which there are few — to perform the exams.

“Philadelphia emergency rooms were not ready for that,” said Lila Slovak, director of the Philadelphia office of the Women’s Law Project, who spent months warning city officials that PSARC was in danger. “They did not know that [the center] was at risk of closing. It was not on anybody’s radar.”

Crystal Yates-Gale, the city’s deputy managing director for health and human services, said in a statement that the final outcome — the city running the center — is ultimately what is best for sexual assault survivors.

“We are proud to have secured the continuity of vital services for victims of crime in a dignified, victim-centered, culturally-competent atmosphere in Philadelphia,” she said.

LaQuisha Anthony, WOAR’s executive director, said in a statement that the organization was hamstrung by last year’s monthslong state budget impasse that froze much of its funding.

She said WOAR was transparent with the city about its financial position.

“Like most Commonwealth-funded providers, we planned on the assumption that funding would resume,” Anthony said. “The impasse instead ran 135 days. By the time it ended, we had drawn down our reserves.”

A lifeline center on a shoestring budget

PSARC, located at 300 E. Hunting Park Ave. in North Philadelphia, has two full-time staff members and a network of about 15 contracted nurses trained to perform sexual assault forensic exams, provided free under Pennsylvania law. The procedures are intended to gather physical evidence, such as DNA left behind by an assailant, and to document injuries that may aid investigators in a future criminal investigation.

Many hospitals lack the specialized staff required to perform sexual assault forensic exams, so they refer patients to PSARC or work with PSARC to have a trained nurse dispatched to the hospital.

The center is located next to the Philadelphia Police Special Victims Unit, but patients are not required to report the assault to law enforcement in order to have the free exam performed.

Founded in 2011 and initially operated by the now-shuttered Hahnemann University Hospital, PSARC has been run since 2019 by Drexel University’s College of Nursing and Health Professions. For most of that time, the operation ran on a shoestring budget.

Until last year, PSARC received no dedicated city funding. The state reimbursed Drexel about $1,000 for each patient treated, with Drexel absorbing substantial losses, according to records. The exam reimbursements can take months to flow from the state.

Brian Keech, then Drexel’s senior vice president for government relations, shared a financial analysis with city officials last year that laid out an annual shortfall averaging more than $175,000.

As Drexel cut staff and benefits across the university last year amid declining enrollment and a $63 million annual operating loss, its leaders told the Parker administration that the school could no longer manage PSARC on its own.

In a series of emails last spring, Keech pressed the city for a funding commitment for the center and warned that, without one, the university would have to tell hospitals to stop referring patients for sexual assault exams.

“We’ve begun to prepare the closure announcement,” Keech wrote in a May 20, 2025, email to Adam Geer, the city’s chief public safety director. “Obviously we’re hopeful we can avoid this scenario, but we do have to adequately prepare area hospitals that they will have to begin providing sexual assault services come July 1 if PSARC closes.”

By early June, the city had found the money.

The scramble to save PSARC

Yates-Gale, the city’s deputy managing director, said in a June 2025 email to Drexel officials that the administration had identified $250,000 in emergency funding to keep the center running.

The plan was for WOAR — the nonprofit formerly known as Women Organized Against Rape — to operate PSARC. The city would support its efforts by routing those funds to WOAR through an existing health department contract.

Through the summer of 2025, the money was tangled in the city’s often lengthy contracting process.

Meanwhile, WOAR was itself under severe financial strain amid the state budget impasse that left community organizations across Pennsylvania unfunded. WOAR’s leaders told city officials that they could not make payroll without the check from the city.

PSARC was left in limbo. The handoff deadline from Drexel to WOAR was moved from Aug. 1 to Sept. 1, with Drexel agreeing to cover an extra month of payroll to bridge the gap. Then, on Aug. 28 — three days before the already delayed transfer — WOAR’s board chair, Joanne Strauss, wrote in an email to city officials that the organization “will not be acquiring” PSARC.

She provided no reason other than saying the organization was “further evaluating the proposed transaction.”

City officials were alarmed. Within an hour, the city’s victim advocate, Adara Combs, emailed Drexel officials to say she was “deeply troubled” by the sudden shift.

Two weeks later, WOAR appeared ready to operate the center again. The group’s board of directors voted unanimously to approve the acquisition, and money from the city began flowing to WOAR to operate the rape exam center — more than $80,000 in total.

Then the plan fell apart again.

In early October, WOAR announced it would lay off staff and cut programs due to its funding crisis.

Anthony, of WOAR, said in a statement the board’s approval of the acquisition of the sexual assault center came as the nonprofit thought the state budget impasse would come to an end and was “contingent on conditions related to funding and our ability to responsibly take control of PSARC.”

“It became clear that those conditions were not resolved,” she said.

Drexel continued to pay to operate the rape crisis center, and WOAR wired the university the city funding it had received. Drexel operated PSARC, with an additional $167,000 in help from the city, until June 30.

The back-and-forth saga highlighted a central question: Why did the city seek to transfer a critical service to WOAR despite the nonprofit’s existing financial problems?

Slovak, of the Women’s Law Project, said it made sense that WOAR stepped up to take over the center’s operations, given its mission to treat and prevent sexual violence. It is common in other cities for rape crisis centers to manage forensic exam facilities.

But overseeing hundreds of sexual assault exams each year, she said, would have been a major expansion of WOAR’s scope because it “is about more than just providing emotional support or accompaniment for survivors.”

Yates-Gale said WOAR was a natural choice to assume operations of the center. The group had an existing contract with the city and its mission aligned with that of PSARC.

“Drexel agreed to continue operations until another suitable alternative organization could be identified,” she said, “and the entirety of the funds for the program were transferred back to them.”

Britt Faulstick, a Drexel University spokesperson, said the school “worked closely with city leadership to ensure a smooth transition.”

Another failed effort to find an operator

The city’s $250,000 in emergency funding bought PSARC time. But the same question remained: Who would run it long-term, and where would they find the money?

This spring, Parker’s budget proposal, which was approved by City Council in June, included $300,000 for the center. The city put the operation out for bid, seeking an outside organization like another hospital or nonprofit to run it.

City officials met on April 13 with potential operators, including representatives from area hospitals that depend on the center, such as Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia. Several expressed concerns about PSARC’s finances.

According to a public recording of the meeting, multiple attendees suggested that $300,000 a year in city funding would not be enough to cover PSARC’s operations and salaries for medical staff who must be available 24-7.

“This has never been something that’s been profitable, so it’s always needed another source of funds to keep it stable,” one hospital representative said. “It’s the money, right, to keep it open and to be able to run this as a service for the city and keep it maintained so you’re not back in this ‘we don’t have it’ in six months.”

Combs, the city’s victim advocate, told potential bidders that they were welcome to “reimagine” how PSARC operates and propose new funding streams.

But hospital representatives remained skeptical and pressed the city to find a different solution, citing a moral urgency.

“It would be a tremendous tragedy if we lost the resources of PSARC in the city,” said a representative from Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital.

“I think we all agree,” said Azucena Ugarte, director of the Philadelphia Office of Domestic Violence Strategies. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

But following the meeting, no one bid.

The city takes over

With no outside bid to operate Philadelphia’s only free rape exam center, the options in front of city officials were either to let it close or to take control themselves.

The city chose the latter. Parker administration officials framed it as a lasting solution.

Faulstick, of Drexel, said the school will continue to train nurses in sexual assault examination to help ensure the care is available. He said PSARC is “positioned for continued growth and long-term sustainability.”

Others have questions about the stabilization plan.

City Councilmember Nina Ahmad, who represents the city at-large and held a hearing earlier this year about PSARC funding, said that the $300,000 annual allocation to the center is likely inadequate and that she will push for more dollars in future city budgets.

Ahmad also said she expected more buy-in from hospitals, noting they would have been saddled with the responsibility of providing sexual assault exams if PSARC had shuttered.

“I am not surprised,” she said in an interview, “but I’m still disgusted that we have not come together on this. … This is evidence being collected, [and] this is how we prevent future rapes.”

Slovak said ensuring PSARC’s financial survival will take more than a change in management. It will require cooperation, including from hospitals, the city, and the state, to work together “so that survivors aren’t sacrificed in the budget gamesmanship.”

Still, she said, the city “can really be this positive, central, coordinating force.”

“And I do feel confident at this point,” Slovak added, that the center “is going to move in a good direction from here.”