Personal Journeys: Little house, big heart

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Personal Journeys: Little house, big heart

Photos: After 25 years in a modest brick ranch in Duluth, the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center faces an unknown future.

Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center director Ann Burdges (left) says goodbye to Christie Watson, 32, after Watson visited the center one day last month. Twelve years ago, Watson was a rape victim who received help from the center, and she's continued to stay in contact with Burdges ever since.

The sun prepares to set on the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center, both literally and figuratively. The center must vacate the building by July 1.

The center has been at this location since 1989.

A scrapbook of polaroid photographs details the early days of the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center when it moved into its current location in 1989. Over the years it has expanded its services and its facilities, becoming the place protocol dictates all sexual assaults victims go for examination if they don't require emergency medical care.

The late Ann Smiley, the center's co-founder along with Cora Salvino, counts pennies at a fundraiser for the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center in the late 1980s.

Smiley started the center in her basement in 1986. She was a retired volunteer with boundless energy and was ticked off at the way rape victims were pushed around and out of busy hospital ER rooms. Smiley died in 1994 from her battle with cancer.

Butterflies fill the ceiling and walls of an examination room at the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center. The center strives to create a homey atmosphere to help put victims at ease. It's much different from the sterile environment of hospital emergency rooms or other medical facilities where rape victims often find themselves.

Kathy Carter, a RN, has been working at the center since 2007 and working full time since 2009.

Director Ann Burdges has been poring over existing grants and other funding sources, looking for ways to rent on a new building. Plenty of people have offered donations of supplies and labor to adapt a new building once they find an appropriate new home.

Paperwork from a sexual assault evidence collection kit lies on an exam table at the Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center.

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Gwinnett Sexual Assault Center director Ann Burdges (left) says goodbye to Christie Watson, 32, after Watson visited the center one day last month. Twelve years ago, Watson was a rape victim who received help from the center, and she's continued to stay in contact with Burdges ever since.

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