Domestic Safety Resource Center in Lamar forced to permanently close after 40 years

Only domestic violence shelter for four rural counties in Colorado permanently closes

Article by Chelsea Casabona with Rocky Mountain PBS – Chelsea Casabona is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS covering Southern Colorado. more

Outside the Prowers County Courthouse in Lamar, Colorado. File photo: Chase McCleary, Rocky Mountain PBS

LAMAR, Colo. — The Domestic Safety Resource Center – the only organization that provided support specifically for domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and stalking victims in Prowers, Baca, Kiowa and Cheyenne Counties – permanently shut its doors in May after 40 years in operation.

“I was shocked,” said Brooke Leonard, the executive director of the Arkansas Valley Resource Center, a nonprofit that provides free services like help with paperwork and court accompaniment for all violence victims in Bent, Crowley and Otero Counties. AVRC functioned as a sister agency to DSRC. The organizations would refer clients to each center’s services in cross-over areas like Prowers and Bent counties.

Rural communities in Colorado experience disproportionately high rates of domestic violence fatalities due to factors such as isolation, limited resources and firearm prevalence in rural communities, according to the Colorado Office of the Attorney General’s Colorado Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board’s 2025 annual report.

In recent years, financial struggles have been common for Colorado nonprofits that deal with domestic violence due to federal funding cuts dating back to 2023. The Office for Victims of Crime cut nearly 45% in federal funding for the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) in 2024, which impacted various violence resource centers, including DSRC.

Leonard knew DSRC was struggling financially, but didn’t find out they permanently shut down until after the doors closed. Leonard said another violence resource professional tried to refer a client to DSRC and couldn’t reach the shelter on the phone, prompting them to reach out to Leonard and let her know. In that phone call, Leonard’s colleague also asked if AVRC would be able to take on clients from DSRC’s service area.

“We’re not even fully funded to serve the three counties we already serve. And so to try to take on four more counties that are huge is next to impossible,” Leonard said.

“We have a very small staff and we just don’t have the funds to travel, or to handle that district.”

Brooke Leonard is director of Arkansas Valley Resource Center in La Junta. File photo: Carly Rose, Rocky Mountain PBS

But Leonard, who has worked at AVRC handling victim cases from a variety of different violent crimes for the past 20 years, needed to respond to DSRC’s closure somehow, even if it wasn’t in all the ways she would have preferred. So Leonard agreed: AVRC would provide limited, remote services to victims in DSRC’s four counties. Remote services include crisis intervention safety planning and using her network to refer domestic violence victims to therapists and other professionals located closer to victims.

“We [AVRC] won’t be able to show up on scene, go into court or help them [victims] with restraining orders, cuz we just can’t do it ourselves,” Leonard said.

DSRC used to provide in-person services to clients like Leigh Miller, a stay-at-home mom who has two children in Lamar. Miller said that she went to DSRC for help in 2021 when dealing with an abusive relationship. Jenny Navarrette, who ran the shelter, helped Miller with handling paperwork like court documents and restraining orders.

“She was there for me. She went to court with me. She stayed by my side. She helped me through all that,” Miller said.

And although Miller had been in and out of therapy her entire life — it never seemed to work for her, she said — Navarrette referred her to a trauma therapist. Miller said it was the best therapy experience of her life.

“I don’t know where I would be right now if it wasn’t for them [DSRC],” Miller said.

Amber Settles, a licensed clinical social worker, said she volunteered hundreds of hours of therapy and relaxation skills to victims at DSRC and helped case management as best she could, even joining Navarrette to help her with the behavioral health side of domestic violence, she said.

“This breaks my heart and I think all communities need a domestic violence shelter because I don’t like the thought of just putting these women in a hotel room for a week with no mental physical or emotional support,” Settles wrote in a message to Rocky Mountain PBS.

“I’m sad that there’s no one else to pick up those services and that have the kind of training that advocates do to provide the support needed,” Leonard said.

“And then it scares me for us [AVRC], you know… what’s our agency looking at if these funding issues continue.”

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