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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announces measures he is supporting to improve public safety during a news conference in Annapolis on Jan. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Witte, File)
Anti-trafficking nonprofit suspends services after alleged breach of contract by Moore admin
Listen to this articleKey Takeaways:
- HER Resiliency Center alleges Maryland underpaid $219,000 in victim aid funding, forcing it to suspend operations.
- The nonprofit claims Gov. Wes Moore‘s office violated its contract and the First Amendment.
- CEO Natasha Guynes says the state retaliated after she criticized its treatment of survivor organizations.
- The Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy denies wrongdoing and defends its grant process.
A nonprofit serving victims of sex trafficking and domestic abuse has sued the Moore administration for breach of contract, saying an underpayment of $219,000 has forced the organization to suspend services and may force it to close.
HER Resiliency Center, which serves women in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., sued Gov. Wes Moore and the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention and Policy last week in Baltimore City Circuit Court, alleging a breach of contract and violations of the First Amendment and the Victims of Crime Act.
Natasha Guynes, the organization’s founder and CEO, says her criticism of the Moore administration’s treatment of survivors’ groups prompted GOCPP executive director Dorothy Lennig to suddenly stop reimbursing HER Resiliency Center at the rate set in their contract.
“They have hamstrung my operations,” Guynes said in an interview.
The complaint says the state determined 55% of the women served by HER were not eligible for services funded by the federal Victims of Crime Act during fiscal year 2025, even though it had covered those expenses in previous years, in addition to cutting its salary reimbursement rate and other costs.
At one point, the office approved funding for a “job coach,” but refused to pay when Guynes submitted an invoice for the salary of a “professional development coach.”
As a result, HER Resiliency Center alleges it was underpaid by $218,861 for fiscal year 2025.
GOCPP is a key contractor for the center, which provides trauma-informed case management, mental health services, employment resources and more. In fiscal year 2023, according to its tax filings, its revenue was about $1.33 million and it paid $1.22 million in expenses.
Guynes said she’s had to lay off her staff and suspend all services.
“GOCPP took these actions only after HER had begun to shine a light on how GOCPP had been acting arbitrarily in ways that were harming victims of crime,” the complaint states. “GOCPP’s mistreatment of victim rights organizations was a widely known fact in the victim support community.”
It alleges that a member of Moore’s staff said Guynes’s social media posts critiquing the office were “becoming a problem.”
“The more I advocated, the more scrutinizing the agency would be,” Guynes said.
A spokesman for GOCPP declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it hadn’t yet been served.
“We stand by the fairness and transparency of our grant-making process for our $300M annual grant portfolio,” spokesman Arinze Ifekauche wrote in an email.
Guynes and the organization are represented pro bono by Timothy Sutton of the Baltimore firm Nguyen Roche Sutton.
Disclosure: Guynes and HER Resiliency Center last week were honored at The Daily Record’s Empowering Women awards. Reporters do not play any role in the selection of award recipients.
