Former SAFE Alliance Nurses Look to Continue Serving Sexual Assault Survivors

Paula Marks called it the biggest heartbreak of her life – leaving her job at the SAFE Alliance, Central Texas’ leading provider of support for survivors of sexual assault and child abuse. Marks was a nurse at SAFE’s Eloise House for over a decade, providing rape kit exams and other care for survivors, before funding for the clinic’s forensic nursing program ended in June. 

By then, however, Marks and 13 of her 14 fellow nurses at the Eloise House had already begun planning for the next chapter of their careers. This August, they announced the creation of Central Texas Forensic Care, a nurse-owned, nurse-run nonprofit that will allow them to continue their work. 

“Love is the reason we do what we do,” Marks told the Chronicle. “We’re not just doing this for a job; it’s our passion and it’s our love. And I think there’s something really powerful in transforming mourning and grief and sadness into action. Because the idea of us not providing these services in our community really just wasn’t an option.”

Marks was one of Eloise House’s original hires after it was created by the SAFE Alliance in 2015 and became its director in January 2025. She and her colleagues helped make the space a warm, trauma-informed alternative to the impersonal care that survivors often experience in hospital emergency rooms. 

Nurses at the Eloise House responded to patients much quicker than hospitals, and they worked under the same roof as advocates who explained victim rights, provided emotional support, and coordinated follow-up support and safety plans. Survivors could get as much or as little help as they wanted. They could get emergency contraception. They could get help being taken off a lease. They could get help with temporary shelter. 

“It was magical,” Marks said. “We and the advocates were like a family, because you get really close when you deal with trauma together day in and day out. We had something special that I think the patients could feel when they walked into Eloise House. It is something that CTFC would like to rebuild again.”  

During its 11 years of existence, the Eloise House was Austin’s primary provider of care for victims of sexual assault. Marks estimates that from September 2023 to September 2025, Eloise House nurses provided consultations, medical care, and evidence collection exams for hundreds of people per year. But in May, budget negotiations between SAFE’s leaders and city management collapsed and the city sent the taxpayer money earmarked for the forensic nursing program to a similar service provided by the Brave Alliance in Williamson County. 

Marks said she is grateful to the Brave Alliance for stepping up to provide the forensic exams. She emphasized that the nurses at Central Texas Forensic Care hope they will be able to provide assistance to the group. “Talking to the leaders over at Brave Alliance, sometimes they get five or six phone calls in a shift. And more nurses doing this life-saving and specialized work is better, so we could serve as a bit of an overflow program for them.”  

Marks said CTFC expects to begin offering forensic nursing services at the end of the month. The group has raised about half of the funding it needs to complete the first phase of its opening, which includes purchasing supplies, equipment, and insurance to begin providing care at hospitals. The second phase is to establish a facility like the Eloise House in Travis County. Though Brave Alliance has such a facility in Cedar Park, Marks said Austin needs its own facility closer to the Downtown area.

“We are open to all callers,” Marks emphasized. “We’re open to all conversations. You know, I’ve always been really impressed with the city of Austin and the City Council. Mayor Watson has a long history of really prioritizing sexual assault response in the community, and I can’t wait to partner with people who are wanting to partner with us. We’re ready to engage in contracts … in partnerships, in communication with anybody and everybody. And we do have a vision: We want this to be nurse-owned and nurse-run.”

Marks added that she has missed caring for patients and is eager to get back to work. “When I tell people what I do, they’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, that just must be awful work.’ And I’ve found it to be very much the opposite. I am the most inspired and the most in awe of the patients that I’ve had the privilege to take care of. The kind of courage that it takes to talk to a stranger about one of the worst days they’ve ever had, about some of the most intimate things that could happen to someone – that they put their trust in me and in the other nurses is such a feeling of privilege and honor.”

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