Board Announces Retirement of Executive Director from BARCC

The Board of Directors of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) announces today that the agency’s long-time Executive Director, Gina Scaramella, is retiring from BARCC on June 30, 2021. BARCC Board member Duane de Four will act as Interim Executive Director. De Four has been a member of BARCC’s board for eight years and brings over 25 years as an expert in the field of gender- and race-based violence prevention. 

“My life has been enriched by the survivors I’ve met, served, and befriended during my tenure at BARCC. I’m grateful to BARCC for providing me with a professional base of operations that’s allowed me to test ideas, collaborate with community leaders, educators, and policymakers, and implement solutions that have improved the lives of survivors,” said Scaramella about her decision to retire from BARCC. “The pandemic has elevated the critical need for systems change. Sexual violence prevention is my life’s work and as I look to the next phase of my career, this is what I will be focusing on as a writer, educator, and consultant.” 

During Scaramella’s 26-year tenure at BARCC, the last 17 of which she served as executive director, BARCC transitioned from a small nonprofit with 12 employees to a 50-person agency offering free services for survivors of all genders including individual and group counseling, case management focused on financial and housing stability, and legal and medical advocacy. BARCC is also powered by over 200 volunteers who provide vital services including 24/7 hotline access; they also serve as community members who are actively working to solve the problem of sexual violence.

“Gina has been a valued partner and has consistently centered the voices of survivors during her time at BARCC,” said Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a champion for survivors of sexual violence and longtime supporter of BARCC’s. “She has been incredibly effective at building partnerships, looking ahead, seeing the gaps, and finding creative ways to reach survivors whose needs are not often met, among them access to services for male survivors, transgender survivors, survivors who are incarcerated, immigrant survivors, and survivors with disabilities.”

BARCC-led policy solutions informed by survivor experiences include a first-in-the-nation partnership with the MBTA to train transit officials to recognize and respond to sexual harassment and to run public service announcements informing riders about safe ways to intervene when they witness sexual harassment. 

They also include the agency’s much-vaunted medical advocacy program, which has been replicated by rape crisis centers around the country. In 1995, Scaramella was hired at BARCC as a medical and legal advocacy coordinator. At the time, the program assisted approximately 10 survivors a year who reported that the experience of a forensic exam was often just as traumatizing as that of a sexual assault. Haunted by these stories, Scaramella organized hospital visits with her medical advocacy volunteers who interviewed doctors and nurses at Boston-area hospitals to learn exactly what happened to survivors from the moment they arrived at the emergency department to when they left. With the information they gathered, Scaramella redesigned BARCC’s program by partnering with point people at area hospitals who would connect survivors with skilled forensic nursing care and BARCC’s wrap-around counseling and advocacy services. The program quickly grew from serving 10 survivors per year to 500 through intensive partnerships with seven hospitals and the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program. 

“Gina has been a steadfast advocate for work to ensure all sexual assault survivors receive the best possible care. Gina’s approach over the years has been to identify gaps and find solutions addressing both the services survivors need and improving the systems they interact with,” said Joan Sham, Director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program. “Gina has been a valuable partner to Massachusetts SANE in improving forensic sexual assault exams, especially through the promotion of community-based advocacy as an essential element of the survivor response. In addition to her local work, Gina was a leader on our five-year national demonstration project that launched the Department’s National TeleNursing Center.  The Center’s TeleSANEs use secure and encrypted telehealth technology to share expertise and to increase equity for access to high quality forensic exams for survivors in 10 Massachusetts hospitals.  Always an asset to the team, Gina has had a tremendous impact on preserving the integrity of the SANE/Rape Crisis Advocacy partnership in the TeleSANE model.”  

Under Scaramella’s leadership, BARCC led a years-long collaboration with MA SANE, local and state crime labs, law enforcement, and other rape crisis centers to create   the Access to Forensic Information Project, which ensures that survivors receive accurate information about their options after an assault, including sexual assault exams and evidence collection for police investigations and prosecution. BARCC’s advocacy for transparency for survivors around forensic evidence has since been replicated by rape crisis centers in other states and featured at national conferences of forensic scientists. 

BARCC also created new programs by adapting and iterating in response to emerging needs. In this way, BARCC became highly effective at increasing access to services for survivors and their families including, and most especially, survivors who are disabled, survivors who are incarcerated, and survivors who are transgender and gender diverse. In addition to the Access to Forensic Information Project and medical and legal advocacy, these programs include: 

• A suite of wrap-around case management services focused on housing and financial stability.
• The MASS Collaboration, a federally funded decade-long partnership to increase access to services for survivors with disabilities.
• The HR Forum for businesses and organizations that want better tools for creating safe workplaces for their employees, customers, and clients. HR Forum clients include Encore Boston Harbor, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Isaacson Miller.
• A 12-hour per day hotline service for incarcerated survivors in Massachusetts correctional facilities.
• The Vicarious Trauma Toolkit, a multi-year project created with Northeastern University's Institute on Urban Health Research and Practice for the federal Office for Victims of Crime. The toolkit is a resource for organizations to mitigate the work-related exposure to trauma experienced by victim service providers and other first responders.
• Beginning in 2016, BARCC instituted a linguistic equity plan to ensure that every BARCC department, including communications, had bilingual (English and Spanish) capacity to remove language as a barrier to support and services. 

“This movement is stronger and better because of Gina’s work. Not only has she created a model program at BARCC, she has worked to build leadership and visibility among independent rape crisis centers nationally,” said Sondra Miller President and CEO, Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. 

Throughout her tenure, Scaramella has received numerous awards from local, state, and federal agencies and organizations. Notable honors include the Gerard D. Downing Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Office of Victims Assistance in 2010, which marked the first time a recipient working outside of the criminal-legal system had been honored, and the 2009 National Crime Victim Service Award from the U.S. Department of Justice, which was presented by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. 

Today, as a nationally-recognized leader in sexual violence prevention, treatment, and response, Scaramella routinely contributes opinion pieces to the Boston Globe, WGBH News, The Hill, and Commonwealth Magazine, and she is frequently interviewed by local and national reporters on issues related to sexual violence. 

“BARCC is one of the nation’s leading rape crisis centers with innovative, survivor-centered programs,” said BARCC Board Chair April Evans. “Gina’s pioneering work has provided a foundation from which the agency can innovate and grow for decades to come.”