MACON, Ga. — According to the Violence Policy Center, Georgia ranked tenth in the nation for its rate of men killing women.
Crisis Line and Safe House of Central Georgia serves victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. They were recently given $1.2 million in Congressional appropriations from the Department of Justice to continue their work.
Sarah Schanck works as the director of One Safe Place Macon, a future family justice center that's being built in Macon-Bibb with the grant money.
The center will continue the work that Crisis Line and Safe House of Central Georgia does in supporting victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
"It's a problem that doesn't discriminate by race or ethnicity, socio-economic status," Schanck said. "It's pervasive."
She said there are over a hundred family justice centers throughout the country, but theirs will be one of the first in the state of Georgia. Two other centers will be built around the same time in Waycross and Cobb County.
Dee Simms has worked as the Executive Director of Crisis Line and Safe House of Central Georgia since 2009. She said the people she's served over the years would have to go from place to place to get all of the help they need.
"A lot of the barriers that some of the people that we served were seeing was the fact that- I mean, they were having to go all over this community to get the additional recourses and the additional services that they need," Simms said.
Those various resources people need will all be grouped together in one place at the new family justice center.
"We have some transportation assistance, but if you have to hop on you know, four different bus lines to get what you need," Simms said. "That's an awful lot."
Her team is currently working on finding a home for the new center, and she said they hope to open its doors sometime in the next year.
"We want people to be able to move from being victims to survivors, and ultimately to thrivers. We want them to really thrive in our community after the trauma that they've been through," Schanck.
The building will be open to anyone in the area who needs help.