After Falling Short, SF Will Revamp Office Aimed at Helping Sexual Assault Victims

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Hillary Ronen on Tuesday outlined the beginnings of a plan to reform the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention, or SHARP, which has come under recent scrutiny over its shortcomings since it was established six years ago.

Officials have said SHARP has failed in its mandate to help survivors of sexual harassment and assault navigate San Francisco’s bureaucratic systems, to report city officers should they fail to help, and to suggest policy reforms for government agencies to better help victims.

SHARP will be folded into a new office, the San Francisco Office of Victim and Witness Rights, which aims to help victims of all types of crime. Ronen’s office plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that will merge the entities and “clarify [the office’s] duties and powers to ensure it is best able to meet the needs of survivors,” she told KQED.

The new office’s inaugural director will be Ivy Lee, an attorney and former policy adviser to Breed, the mayor announced during a press conference on Tuesday at the West Portal Recreation Center.

“This office will have one purpose, which is to try to make government work better for survivors,” Lee said.

Most recently, Lee was Breed’s policy adviser on public safety and victims’ rights. She also served on the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees and as a legislative aide of former Supervisors Jane Kim and Norman Yee.

Ronen created SHARP in 2018 to respond to sexual assault victims who said the San Francisco Police Department did not adequately investigate their claims. The office’s deficiencies came to light in a scathing investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, which found SHARP did not propose any policy changes to the three largest city agencies that sexual assault survivors often encounter: the San Francisco Police Department, the district attorney’s office or San Francisco General Hospital.

“Setting up SHARP was never easy. But Ivy is that person because she has the diplomacy, she has the credibility, she has the relationships,” Ronen said at Tuesday’s press conference. “That’s why I know SHARP is going to succeed like it never has before.”

Lee told KQED that SHARP would need a larger staff to do enough outreach to victims; right now, it has only two employees, according to its website.

“If we are going to have that public-facing aspect, you need to be staffed up appropriately,” Lee said. “If we want to help victims, then ask them what they need, ask them what they want, resource it, and deliver it.”

The creation of the Office of Victim and Witness Rights was mandated by the June 2022 voter passage of Proposition D, which was authored by Supervisor Catherine Stefani, who is running for state Assembly. Discussions of victims’ needs were at a fever pitch during 2022 as people debated the efficacy of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in that same election.

Surveys conducted after Proposition D’s passage showed a need for the new office to represent victims broadly, according to the mayor’s office: San Franciscans said they experienced challenges navigating the criminal legal process, had unmet emotional and mental health support needs, and lacked access to emergency financial relief after a traumatic or violent event.

SHARP is similar to the new Office of Victim and Witness Rights in purpose; only its focus is more narrowly tailored to help sexual assault survivors. In a City Hall hearing earlier this month, supervisors asked its leaders why SHARP hadn’t carried out its mission.

Sheryl Evans Davis, the executive director of the Human Rights Commission, which oversees SHARP, said the office instead focused on community education and prevention.

“We are apologetic and regretful, but we are also committed to doing better,” Davis said in the hearing. “We’ve had some shortcomings here.”