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Philadelphia Inquirer
Wednesday, October 2, 2002
City sex-crimes unit to get new home at Episcopal Hospital
By Craig R. McCoy,
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The City of Philadelphia has finally signed a lease for a renovated headquarters for the police sex-crimes unit - and advocates hope the move will trigger more sweeping changes in how sexual assaults are investigated. It's only a signature, but the deal means that the Special Victims Unit will exit its overcrowded, grim and remote office at the old Frankford Arsenal - a backwater that once seemed to symbolize the now-much-improved unit's troubled history and low prestige. |
| The new headquarters on the grounds of Episcopal Hospital in Kensington also will put police just a few steps away from the Episcopal emergency room, which is the city-designated ER for treating rape victims in the northern half of Philadelphia. And the city has reserved space in the new headquarters building as a step toward the day when social workers join police in investigating sex assaults against children. Pulling together police, social workers, rape counselors and medical personnel in one place has become a national trend. The city hopes the 80-officer squad will move to the first four floors of the nine-story Tower Building early next year after $1.5 million in renovations, according to Andres Perez Jr., the city public properties commissioner. The city announced plans to move the unit two years ago, but negotiations over insurance slowed a deal. The 10-year lease for $245,000 a year was signed with Temple University Health Systems. Advocates for victims of sex crimes hope that city social workers will eventually follow police into the Tower Building. Investigators from the city Department of Human Services (DHS) also look into allegations of sex abuse against children, but their inquiries are often uncoordinated with police. For police, the primary goal is to make an arrest. For social workers, it's separating victims from abusers. Alba Martinez, the city Department of Human Services commissioner, said last week that she could not commit to moving her social workers to Episcopal without talking more with them, city unions and police. But Martinez said she wanted to pursue the idea. Such joint facilities, she said, have "been tried around the country and they've been demonstrated to lead to much better results for citizens and clients." This summer, her agency created a special 15-member investigative unit solely devoted to sex crimes. "It is a major system change," Martinez said. Before, the general pool of 125 Human Services investigators was responsible for looking into sexual assaults along with the more numerous cases of neglect or physical abuse. Martinez said creating the special unit was a prerequisite to linking up her staff with police. Advocates say police and social workers should coordinate to spare children the trauma of being reinterviewed by different investigators. Moreover, such repeat interviews prompt some children to embellish their accounts to please the adults talking to them, experts warn. Several major cities, including New York, Chicago and Houston, have set up such places combining police and civilian investigators, dubbing them "co-located facilities." Christina Kirchner, executive director of the Children's Alliance, an advocacy group for child victims of sex abuse in Philadelphia, says her group also hopes to move to the Episcopal building. The hospital, formally known as Temple University Hospital, Episcopal Division, is at Lehigh Avenue and Front Street. The Alliance has an office at 40th and Chestnut Streets, where it supervises a small number of joint police and social worker investigations. "We can't imagine anything better for kids than having us there with law enforcement - and bringing DHS there," Kirchner said. The nonprofit group Women Organized Against Rape also hopes to station counselors and hot-line workers at the building, according to Carole Johnson, the group's executive director. "I think it's fantastic," Johnson said of the closing of the lease. "It's long overdue." Since the police rape squad's founding in 1981, it has been shunted from one decrepit site to another. It moved into the arsenal about 1995, setting up shop in a plain brick building in the former military compound, ringed to this day by razor wire. The city endorsed moving from the arsenal in 2000 amid controversy over the unit's years of poor performance. Articles in The Inquirer disclosed that the squad, since it was founded, had labeled many victims as liars or dumped their complaints with little investigation. Now, advocates and prosecutors agree that the squad is much improved. New data show it has one of the highest rape arrest rates in the nation, far higher, for example, than New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The plans for the new headquarters call for separate entrances for the accused and the victims. There will also be waiting rooms for adult victims and for children and their guardians. In all, police will occupy 20,000 square feet in the new facility, more than twice the 8,000 square feet rented in the arsenal. Contact Craig R. McCoy at 215-854-4821 or cmccoy@phillynews.com Inquirer staff writer Mark Fazlollah contributed to this article.
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