For over 30 years, the Women’s Crisis Center in Salinas provided services to survivors and families of sexual assault and domestic violence. But the nonprofit closed in August.
Clare Mounteer, the executive director of the Monterey Rape Crisis Center (MRCC), the county’s only other nonprofit sexual assault crisis center, had just returned from England when she received a phone call from the Office of Emergency Services asking for the agency’s help.

“We had enough money in our reserves for exactly this kind of thing, for emergencies, for times when the state budget was late,” Mounteer says. Ironically, it was a 52-day delay in the state budget that ultimately broke Women’s Crisis Center and forced its closure.
Within 24 hours, Women’s Crisis Center phone lines were transfered to the MRCC office and advocates were assisting victims.
The WRCC recently opened a new office in Salinas and has recruited new volunteers to help survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.
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