THE CHARITY that has provided overnight housing for homeless men in local churches for more than two decades defended the safety of the program days after a 23-year-old transient said she was raped by one of its homeless clients.

On Oct. 3, a woman told Pacific Grove police she was sleeping outside St. Mary’s church on 12th Street when she was assaulted at about 4 a.m. by one or more men at the church who were staying there as part of I-HELP — a program that arranges for homeless men to sleep in various local churches and synagogues.

While police haven’t named any suspects, or even confirmed they were I-HELP recipients, Eric Johnsen, president of the board of Shelter Outreach Plus, which sponsors I-HELP, said the program has been safe in its two decades of operation.

“This has never happened before,” he told The Pine Cone. “The program has been going for 20 years, so when something like this comes up, we take it extremely seriously.”

Johnsen said that the men in the I-HELP program, who stay at a different church on the Peninsula every night, are supervised by a “monitor,” who is another homeless man I-HELP holds responsible for making sure the other men don’t come and go from the church.

“Shelter Outreach Plus has a number of safety and security measures in place, one of which is to ensure that I-HELP participants are appropriately monitored during their overnight stay and are not allowed to come and go at-will,” Johnsen wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to local churches.

The monitor spends the night in the church with the homeless men and “sleeps in a strategic place so they can tell if someone goes in or out,” Johnsen said.

However, because monitors also go to sleep around the same time the other roughly two dozen men do, Johnsen said the system isn’t perfect. “If someone were to want to go outside for some reason, they could,” he said. “But it would be hard to do that without disturbing the other guys.”

During the night of the alleged rape, the men slept — as they usually do — in St. Mary’s Edwards Hall, which contains a rear door that opens directly to a wooden deck where the woman had been sleeping and where she told police she had was raped.

However, Johnsen said nothing seemed out of the ordinary that night. “I-HELP overnight monitors said they had not noticed anyone missing away from the church that evening or early morning of the incident,” he said.

Police investigation continues

Meanwhile, Pacific Grove Police Cmdr. John Nyunt told The Pine Cone Tuesday that representatives from I-HELP have been very cooperative during the investigation. Nyunt said he is trying to interview all the men who were at the church the night of the alleged assault.

“We want to be sensitive to the victim’s needs,” he said. “However, we also don’t want to jump to any conclusions concerning our potential suspects.”

Nyunt said he didn’t know whether forensics technicians or medical personnel had collected any semen from the scene and declined to say whether the woman had vaginal injuries. However, the woman did have an abrasion under the left eye.
Johnsen said I-HELP is intended to be a six-month program to offer homeless men shelter while they achieve certain self-improvement goals, like getting a job.

“We have an expectation they do certain activities to get them back on their feet and be self-sustaining,” he said.

Each of them has to register for the program, which creates a file for each man containing his personal information. At about 5 p.m. each day, a bus picks up roughly 25 to 30 men on Del Monte Boulevard in Monterey, and they’re searched for drugs, alcohol and weapons.

From there, they’re transported to one of the 30 churches on the Peninsula.

If the men don’t have their own blankets and pillows, they’re usually provided once at their destination, they’re often fed (St. Mary’s has a large refrigerator stuffed with food for the men) and sometimes given clothing. Some churches offer Bible study.

“It’s lights out about 9 or 10 p.m.,” Johnsen said. “Sometimes the church will have someone stay there [overnight], sometimes not.”

About 10 congregations in Carmel and Pacific Grove take part in the I-HELP program.

Meanwhile, Johnsen said Shelter Outreach Plus has also offered to help the woman find shelter. “We have told the police that one of our women’s shelters will be able to take her in, if and when needed,” he said.

Shelter Outreach Plus provides a variety of services, including emergency shelter and housing for temporary homelessness for men and women.

The woman was taken to Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula several hours after the alleged attack after she told St. Mary’s senior warden Bruce Obbink what had happened. She then underwent a Sexual Assault Response Team examination at the hospital and was released Wednesday night.

Monterey County Rape Crisis Center executive director Clare Mounteer wouldn’t say whether her organization helped the woman but said it’s protocol for police to contact the center anytime a sexual assault victim is taken to a hospital for a SART exam. The group also offers individual and group counseling and lets victims know what shelter and other services are available to them. 

“Our role is to be with the person during the exam and make sure all their questions are answered,” she said.