There’s more to split between nonprofit Faces of Hope and Ada County than was revealed

Ada County Prosecutor Jan Bennetts says her passion for serving victims of crimes led her, with partners, to create the FACES of Hope Victim Center in 2006.

Since then, the center, renamed in January as the Ada County Victim Services Center, has undergone countless changes, including a change of tenants in the building and staffing. But what hasn’t changed, according to Bennetts, is the mission of helping victims.

In December, the Ada County Commission removed the Faces of Hope Foundation from the county-owned center after the county and the foundation reached an impasse in the foundation’s licensing agreement with the county. Since the split, a Faces of Hope Foundation board member has told the Idaho Statesman that there is more to the split than was previously revealed.

Problems arose between the foundation and Ada County beginning in 2016, when the foundation reorganized its board to include community members, rather than law enforcement and county elected officials, said Sid Sullivan, vice president of the Faces of Hope Foundation and the retired president of AceCo Precision, a Boise company that manufactures parts for large machines.

The foundation began seeking to expand its services to Meridian. That plan was finally about to become reality in 2023. But the foundation’s partners in the center thought victims would mistakenly think the Meridian office would offer the same array of services that the downtown center does, because both the foundation and the center used “Faces of Hope” in their names.

The county and other governmental and nonprofit partners operating in the center asked the foundation to change its name to prevent such confusion. The foundation refused. So in January, Ada County changed the name of the downtown center to the Ada County Victim Services Center.

Faces of Hope left the county building on Jan. 30.

“That move to West Ada began to be a break from the county as the foundation’s mother ship,” Sullivan told the Statesman by phone. “The Faces of Hope Foundation, and its services and everything that we provide was now going to operate in a new facility somewhere else. Without (the foundation) being located downtown, the county no longer would have oversight over that. When they started to lose some of that oversight, the county started to feel as if they needed or wanted to maintain control.”

A fight over the redlined licensing agreement

The FACES of Hope Victim Center opened in 2006 to be a one-stop shop for people who have experienced abuse. The Faces of Hope Foundation was one of 16 organizations providing help there.

(The other 15 are the St. Luke’s Health System and its CARES program, the Saint Alphonsus Health System, the Ada County Sheriff’s Office and Prosecutor’s Office, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Boise State University, the University of Idaho, Idaho Adult Protective Services, the Idaho Assistance League, Charitable Assistance to the Community’s Homeless (CATCH), the Idaho Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers, and the police departments of Meridian, Boise and Garden City.)

The Faces of Hope Foundation, launched by the county at the same time it launched the center, is a nonprofit that offers victims six to eight weeks of counseling, legal support and advice from independent lawyers. The foundation also provides money and resources like food, gas and a safe place to sleep for victims who need them.

The Ada County Prosecutor’s Office told the Statesman in an email that the Victim Center in 2023 saw over 1,000 patients who sought medical assistance from St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus. The Ada County victim-witness coordinators, who work in the center, saw 240 victims.

The county in 2023 asked the foundation to renew its licensing agreement, a required document to operate out of the center. Sullivan said the foundation’s board wanted to continue to operate in the downtown location but also wanted to maintain independent control over some of its resources. For example, it sought to use its own computer server rather than the county’s server.

“So that’s why we made what are considered ‘red lines’ in the license agreement,” Sullivan said.

In the red-lined draft, a copy of which was obtained by the Statesman, the foundation removed sections that authorized the Ada County prosecutor’s office to participate in foundation board meetings as a nonvoting member and to be “an active and engaged member” of the foundation board.

The foundation also removed a section that required its executive director to give the Prosecutor’s Office updates on victims services efforts in the Victim Center.

The draft also included a foundation suggestion that the county employee who worked at the foundation be “relocated to a non-foundation space at the Victim Center.”

After the edits were proposed, Sullivan said, the foundation hoped to sign it and remain in the downtown building.

County officials were dismayed. In a Dec. 15 meeting with the Ada County commissioners, Shawna Dunn, chief criminal deputy with the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, said she received the red-line draft in November. Dunn said the draft and conversation with the foundation beforehand “reflected the same spirit of autonomy rather than partnership.”

Sullivan said the redlined draft would have made sure the foundation had the ability to independently open up the new Faces of Hope Meridian location.

“We wanted to negotiate,” he said. “We wanted to work with them. We thought that there was room to compromise there. And they did not want to talk.”

County held meetings to address concerns

Dunn told the commissioners in December that the redline agreement was not the first time the county and other partners in the Victim Center expressed concern with the way the foundation had been operating.

In April 2023, Dunn said, executives from each organization that provides victims services in the building met to try to “really talk about these issues.”

“At that April meeting, the concerns that I’ve expressed about victim confusion and community confusion (around the Faces of Hope name in Meridian) were expressed,” Dunn said. “And there have been regular meetings, some of which included Commissioner [Rod] Beck. We’ve had small meetings and large meetings with the partners and have tried to redirect on these issues as as much as we could. And we just have not been successful.”

On Nov. 7, eight partner organizations called upon the foundation to change its name. When the foundation refused, the county removed the foundation from the building, dropped FACES of Hope from the building’s name and substituted Ada County instead.

The county brought in the Women’s and Children’s Alliance, another victim-support nonprofit, to take Faces’ place. It also hired a new executive director, Trina Allen, to run the center.

Sullivan thinks the dispute has always been about control.

“The fact is, ultimately, that they want to control the decisions of the board, and who we hire and who we fire, and the decisions that we make strategically,” he said. “And it’s OK. We as a board want to make sure that we have and maintain the control of the organization. And ultimately I think that’s the difference.”

Dunn and the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment on Sullivan’s allegations. Dunn and Bennetts told the Statesman in an interview that they want to focus on the partner organizations that still operate in the center, not the foundation that left.

Change comes to Victim Center

In an interview at the center, Bennetts and Allen said victims need to know that the center is still at their service.

Before the center opened in 2006, Bennetts was in charge of recruiting the partners, including St. Luke’s CARES and others.

“I remember specifically going to the doctor in charge at the time, and talking to him about moving here,” she said. “And the leap of faith that he took to move here to be really an anchor. It is important for child-abuse victims to have a place like this where it isn’t an ER or hospital room.”

Bennetts and Allen hope to help the Victim Center open a new chapter that includes mutual respect among all of the partners in the building.

“We all have the same mission,” Allen said. “And I know we sometimes have different policies and procedures on getting to the mission, but that we have respect for each other is very important.”

Allen succeeds Jean Fisher as executive director of the center. Fisher retired in 2021.

Allen is a licensed clinical social worker. She worked for CARES with St. Luke’s for the last six years, which is located inside the Ada County Victim Services Center.

One of the first cases Bennetts prosecuted with Ada County was a homicide case with a 21-year-old victim, she said.

“From then on it really fueled my passion for serving victims and ensuring that the process is one of respect and dignity and really enforces the victim’s constitutional rights and statutory rights,” Bennetts said.

The Ada County Victim Center is open 24 hours, seven days a week to anyone needing assistance. It is located at 417 S. 6th St. in Boise.

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