BRUNSWICK, Maine — Sue Hall Dreher was sitting in her office at Sexual Assault Support Services of Midcoast Maine one day when she overheard a teenager say to her mother, “Wow, I must not be the only one.”
Dreher called that encounter “a defining moment” in her two decades as executive director of SASSMM, the Brunswick-based organization that provides services to survivors of sexual violence.
From creating model programs that increased awareness and support for specific populations of survivors to facilitating a new system of cooperation among advocates, law enforcement and health care providers, Dreher has been a “visionary” for the organization that has grown dramatically in size and scope during her tenure.
A state and national expert on supporting survivors of sexual assault, Dreher will retire this week after 19 years as executive director of SASSMM.
“What sticks with me is that I know how many survivors remain silent because they don’t want to be judged by their peers,” Dreher said recently in the SASSMM offices on Maine Street. “That’s what gets me up in the morning.”
“She’s one of those people who comes along once in a generation,” Ricker Hamilton, deputy commissioner of programs for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said.
Dreher joined SASSMM in 1995, when the agency “had been in a fair amount of turbulence,” according to Marty McIntyre, executive director of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Services, which provides similar support to survivors in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties. “She stepped in and really turned that agency around and set it on the course to become what it is today.”
Dreher’s groundbreaking work with “underserved and marginalized” victims increased awareness and support of groups, such as those who are incarcerated, individuals with disabilities and, perhaps most notably, the elderly, according to Elizabeth Ward Saxl, executive director of the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Saxl said she has consulted with Dreher for years on state policy about sexual violence and noted that Dreher also serves as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Violence against Women.
Ricker pointed to a particular group Dreher has led in the midcoast area for older women who have been sexually assaulted, to “give them a safe place to come and talk about their experiences.”
“She was always looking for underserved victims,” Brunswick police Cmdr. Mark Waltz said. “A few years back, she noticed folks with developmental disabilities were frequently preyed upon — unfortunately sometimes by caregivers. Sue initiated a partnership with the Independence Association, got grant funding and used folks with developmental disabilities to help write a script and sell a [training] video.”
Most recently, Dreher has begun working with hospice volunteers who sometimes hear from dying patients who want to recount their long-ago sexual assaults. Other populations that need attention are male survivors of assault and those victimized because of their sexual orientation.
Dreher is proud of her work with specific groups of survivors.
“Always, always we need to not forget the kids who are living in an environment where they’re being molested every day,” she emphasized “Those are our biggest numbers: children, adolescents and early adults.”
Dreher has created several programs, such as one that uses puppets in elementary schools to teach children as young as 4 years old simple lessons about how to be a good friend and who to turn to when they’re hurt. She has taught college survivors that it’s OK to report their assault, even if it will potentially ruin the perpetrator’s future career. Dreher also brought together law enforcement officers, health care workers and prosecutors in order to work collaboratively to provide better services for those survivors.
“When she first came, the staff didn’t have a great relationship with the police and many other organizations in town, and she saw that as a priority,” Dodie Jones, a longtime board member who worked with Dreher for 14 years, said.
Dreher began a “groundbreaking project” in which law enforcement, medical staff, advocates and others met together for more than a year, creating a set of “standard operating procedures” and “getting to know each other,” Jones said.
“The thing she was best at was forging all kinds of partnerships, Waltz said. “Sometimes in advocacy work, people can dig into their silos — in law enforcement, in the hospital, in the (district attorney’s) office.”
Dreher arrived at SASSMM to discover many systems that “were each working well for the community” but not working well together.
Collaboration “didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “We started coming to the table and talking about what our relationships had been. … All who came to the table were open to improving the system that responds to survivors: How can we improve service to make them the best they can be based on a horrific system that already has enough pain and violence?”
Today, Dreher said, “we really can pick up the phone for any law enforcement agency in our county, and they’ll talk to us.”
“She’s able to work across systems, across jurisdictions and bring people together,” said Holly Stover, director of the Office of Violence Prevention for Maine DHHS and a former chairwoman of the United Way of Midcoast Maine. “Her intent has always been to create better services for the people who need them, and she’s accomplished that.”
Dreher also was able to secure funding for projects she deemed important, including acquiring a $64,000 grant to expand services to Knox and Waldo counties. Even with that funding, the organization remains “stretched thin” to adequately provide for sexual assault survivors, Dreher said.
“She is definitely a visionary,” Jones said. “She would see a need, write the grants, get the money and off we would go.”
The growth of SASSMM “legitimized the need for the service,” Dreher said. But she’s ready for “more life and less work” and so will retire from SASSMM and wait to see what project excites her next.
The board named Clara Porter the new executive director of SASSMM.
Dreher said she is confident the agency will move forward with the same, or even more, momentum, adding, “The hallmark of a good leader is that people catch up with you, pass you, and take the baton and keep moving.”
To reach a sexual assault advocate, call the Statewide Sexual Assault Crisis and Support Line at 800-871-7741, TTY 888-458-5599. This free and confidential 24-hour service is accessible from anywhere in Maine. Calls are automatically routed to the closest sexual violence service provider.