Angela’s House
Ten years ago the Juvenile Justice Fund (JJF) pioneered a solution to the tragic challenge facing girls who are the victims of commercial sexual exploitation. In collaboration with the judges of the Fulton County Juvenile Court, we recognized that there were no facilities or programs in the southeast dedicated to addressing the unique challenges faced by this population and extremely low public awareness. Angela’s House was born out the urgent need for safe, secure, stable housing and appropriate treatment to rescue our girls off the streets.
Through this decade, JJF has been on the forefront of raising awareness about commercial sexual exploitation of children, advocating for legislation to confront this issue, gathering data to better understand the challenge, training stakeholders who deal with this issue and developing programs to support the victims. Today, the Juvenile Justice Fund is proud to announce that Angela’s House will transition to a new dynamic model. For the past four years, JJF has contracted with Inner Harbour to manage operations and programming at Angela’s House. We have come to trust and respect their understanding of the issues faced by this population and their ability to address them successfully. When Inner Harbour was acquired last year by Youth Villages, a leading children’s behavioral health nonprofit, Youth Villages and JJF saw the opportunity to take the services of Angela’s House to a new level. While JJF will continue to be an essential resource, Youth Villages will now own and operate Angela’s House, offering girls in need the myriad of innovative services that their national organization provides. Youth Villages was recently named by the White House as a nonprofit organization with “promising ideas that are transforming communities.”
Deborah Richardson, the founding Executive Director of the Juvenile Justice Fund and a visionary of the Angela’s House project states, “from the very beginning this was part of the dream and plan that an institution that does this work every day would ultimately champion the program and evolve the project. We are pleased to see that this valuable work continues.”
The Juvenile Justice Fund remains a vigilant advocate and activist in the arena of commercially sexually exploited children (CSEC). As a specialist in the building of a model CSEC initiative, we have an ongoing commitment to support the CSEC population locally and facilitate the replication of this model in other parts of the country. We are gratified as an organization that the cry has been taken up by so many to address this critical concern and appreciate Youth Villages and our many visionary partners in this ongoing endeavor. We will continue to be pioneers in this mission through our “A Future. Not A Past.” statewide campaign. Lastly we are privileged to serve metro Atlanta’s children through the Juvenile Justice Fund's CEASE (Center to End Adolescent Exploitation) project as we move toward vital innovations in prevention and early intervention.
