05/12/2026
Eighteen years of running a r**e crisis center has taught me more about humanity, its beauty, its fragility, and its failure than I ever imagined I’d have to learn.
I’m tired.
Time has flown by, and time has dragged on.
But through every season, every storm, I fought the good fight, even when some didn’t like how hard I fought. I fought anyway.
Because victims deserved someone who refused to look away.
Thousands of victims.
Millions of tears.
A lifetime of stories that never should’ve needed telling.
And still, I wish I could’ve done more.
I wish the world was kinder.
I wish rapists didn’t r**e.
I wish cowards didn’t beat the people they claim to love.
I wish our judicial system did better, cared more and held people accountable instead of letting them slip through the cracks built on politics, apathy, and ignorance.
I wish our community worried less about Hollywood drama and more about what’s happening in our own backyards, our own courthouse, our own community.
I wish we held accountable those with the power to make a difference when they fail survivors, because make no mistake, they have failed them.
After eighteen years… I just can’t carry that weight the same way anymore.
But don’t think for a second that these years were in vain.
We have done extraordinary things.
We have changed lives.
We have changed laws.
We have changed the way this community thinks, speaks, listens, and sees.
And yet, despite all of that…there are still serial rapists walking the streets.
To those who think they got away with their crimes…
whether you hid behind a pathetic plea deal,
whether you intimidated your victims into silence,
whether the system protected you instead of the people you hurt,
hear me clearly:
You didn’t get away with anything.
You know what you did.
I know what you did.
They know what you did.
One day you will pay for the lives you shattered.
For those who repeatedly did the right thing and suffered the good old boy retaliation. Continue to do the right thing. You are what’s right in the world.
To the victims…
you amaze me.
Your strength, your resilience, your ability to survive what should have broken you, that is what carried all of us through the darkest days.
Your courage made it possible for us to be ready again and again for the next person who walked through our doors.
You are the heartbeat of our work.
And now, yes, there will be changes ahead for The Phoenix Center.
Change isn’t something to fear; it’s the most exciting part.
Because this place is in the hands of incredible staff, dedicated volunteers, and a board that believes in a victim-centered future more fiercely than ever.
I may be stepping away, but the mission, the fire, the fight,
they live on.
And the Phoenix will rise, again and again, exactly as it was always.
Deanne, former ED
