“Toxic” Work Culture Undermines SAFE's Vital Mission, Former Staffers Say

Past workers and Board members said the domestic violence organization’s management under longtime Executive Director Salley Stepp has led to high turnover and diminished services.

SAFE’s office in Brevard

BREVARD — Virginia Watkins threw herself into creating a study space for the children of abused women at the shelter of SAFE Inc. of Transylvania County.

She found an out-of-the way corridor and equipped it with donated desks and school supplies. She used her past experience as a teacher to make the area welcoming and engaging.

But rather than being praised, said Watkins, a former child advocate at SAFE, “I was told to, you know, put it all away, like, get rid of this.”

The stated reason was that the desks blocked access to a fire exit and extinguisher, said Watkins, who provided photos to show this was not the case and called the claim “ludicrous and unfounded.” 

The real reason, another supervisor confided, was that Watkins was “ ‘rocking the boat,’ ” she said. “Basically, I was told, ‘Just lay low and do as you’re told. Don’t go above and beyond or it will only come back and bite you.’ ”

Thwarted initiative. It was a recurring theme of interviews with more than a dozen former SAFE employees and several former members of SAFE’s Board of Directors.

Many of the past workers’ other feelings about the nonprofit were summed up in a December email to the Board from a departing staffer, who described SAFE’s work culture as “unwelcoming, indifferent, disconnected, secretive, unempathetic . . . and unprofessional.”

The former staffers repeatedly called the environment at SAFE “toxic” and “dysfunctional.” Of the eight former employees who agreed to speak on the record, only one reported an overall positive experience. Several others said they were speaking out reluctantly, worried they would harm an organization with the critical mission of addressing and preventing sexual violence and domestic abuse.

They did so, they said, out of a conviction that SAFE could be doing this job far better if not for the leadership of longtime Executive Director Salley Stepp and loyal members of the Board.

Among their specific complaints:

• Money raised or granted for defined purposes was not used for those reasons, said two former employees, one of whose claims were confirmed in a report by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

• The work environment led to high staff turnover that prevented the development of future SAFE leaders and diminished the effectiveness of key programs. This year alone, the departures include an executive assistant, the director of community relations and the youth services program manager.

• Two former Board members said Stepp rebuffed their offers to help improve SAFE’s operations by either updating personnel policies or helping to write a new strategic plan.

• SAFE’s unbending Covid-19 policy forced the resignation of employees at the onset of the pandemic and limited their ability to receive unemployment benefits.

• The organization failed to maintain two promising initiatives, the Men for Change mentoring program designed to model healthy domestic relationships and a Family Resource Center that provided a range of resources for domestic violence survivors under one roof.

Some past and current Board members disagreed with the unfavorable view of Stepp, praising her current work and longtime passion for helping victims of domestic violence.

Stepp disputed one claimed example of redirected funds and said the other was the fault of a lower-level staff member.

She and others also said high turnover is endemic in a field that pays modestly and makes great emotional demands on workers.

And, by way of declining to respond in detail about former employees’ concerns, Stepp said many of them have been drawn to work for the organization because they had suffered abuse in the past.

Though they are “good people,” she said, “they just carry that anger with them and they have to project that blame outside of themselves . . . Sometimes people are just disgruntled and there is not a lot that can be done even when you do the things they ask you to do.”

Yes, Watkins and others said. Many — though certainly not all — SAFE employees have been in relationships based not on love and encouragement but on “power and control.”

They were also trained to recognize and, in the case of Corey Gafnea, a former SAFE rape prevention educator, instruct students about these roots of destructive relationships.

“The irony is, I taught this to students,” she said, “and basically the whole organization is run on a system of power and control.”

A Lifetime Commitment

Part of the SAFE thrift store operation expanded under Stepp’s 23-year leadership of the organization

Stepp, in a contentious interview last week, not only declined to discuss the specifics of employee complaints. She also denied NewsBeat’s requests for names of other former workers or documents such as Board minutes that might refute their claims.

Why? None of it would change the narrative, she said. “You’re trying to make a story where you have victims and you have a villain, me.”

To be sure, this is an unaccustomed role for Stepp, who has been praised for working to combat domestic violence since shortly after a federal law created funding for shelters in 1984.

The following year, she was hired as the first leader of the first domestic violence organization in Henderson County.

SAFE, which stands for Shelter Available for Family Emergencies, was also founded in 1985. Stepp became its executive director in 2001, when the group’s shelter on Gallimore Road could house only eight residents.

That capacity has more than doubled on her watch, she said. She helped secure the private home that serves as the current shelter, Stacey’s House, in 2006 and oversaw its expansion in 2014, according to a Transylvania Times article marking her 20 years on the job.

She reorganized and energized SAFE, the story said, initiating educational and outreach programs, developing relationships in the community, and expanding the thrift store operation that, Stepp said last week, covers all the costs of running the shelter.

Along with other sources of income, including $777,000 worth of government grants, SAFE’s total revenue came to more than $1.6 million in the 2023 fiscal year, according to that year’s annual report. Stepp, who was paid $80,000 in 2021, according to a grant document, said in the interview that the organization employs a staff of about 33.

“The community owes a great debt of gratitude to Salley Stepp,” said Sam Edney, former chair of SAFE’s Board.

Longtime County Commissioner David Guice, who served on the group’s Board off and on for decades, said that, under Stepp, SAFE “has done a lot of great work and it’s been a tremendous organization in the community.”

Cindy Donaldson, the Board vice chair who is set to take over as chair in July, called Stepp “a servant leader (who) goes above and beyond expectations.”

“I admire Sally,” Donaldson said, “I admire her commitment.”

“Salley Stepp’s Kingdom”

Steve Woodsmall, who resigned from SAFE’s Board earlier this year.

So does former Brevard Police Chief Phil Harris, but he also suggested her experience and devotion has fostered a certainty that can shut down dissent.

“She was very committed. I think it was more than a job or a career, I think it was more of an identity for Salley,” said Harris, who served on the Board until his retirement from the city three years ago.

“I think what happens when someone gets that committed, they think they have the answers and that their job is not to seek wisdom, it’s to seek confirmation that this is how we do things.”

Or, as others see it, demand complete control.

Top-level members of her staff are seen as conduits who spread Stepp’s harsh demands to lower-level employees, former staffers said. Other critics said open discussion on the Board is squelched by longtime members loyal to Stepp, including current chair Vernetta Milts and past chair Sharon Gurtler.

“Salley will pack the Board with her friends so there’s no accountability,” said Greg Cathcart, SAFE’s former coordinator of collaborative services. “That’s Salley Stepp’s kingdom and it’s going to be run the way Salley Stepp sees fit.”

Milts and Gurtler did not return emails or text messages seeking comment. But Donaldson, a retired school administrator who began volunteering at SAFE seven years ago, refuted this view, describing the transparency of the Board’s executive committee.

It doesn’t make decisions, she said, but before each monthly Board meeting “we review financial statements, minutes, the executive director’s report . . . and those things that we review go right on the agenda” for a vote of the full Board.

As for the view that Board leadership does Stepp’s bidding, she said, “I am not a yes person.” And when she was recruited for the Board about four years ago, she recalled, “I said, ‘Are you sure you want me? I’m a questioner.’ ”

So is Steve Woodsmall, who resigned by walking out of a meeting in disgust early this year after about six months on the Board. Unlike Donaldson he doesn’t think he got good answers.

Because he had heard from some SAFE workers that they “are not treated well, not informed,” he said, he asked for an employee survey. 

“I wanted to get data to support that and nobody would give it to me because they didn’t want to know,” said Woodsmall, formerly the coordinator of Brevard College’s Department of Business and Organizational Leadership. 

When trying to help write a strategic plan, he asked for an organizational chart, he said, “and got some piece of crap back that had very little detail on it.”

When he asked Stepp to identify “two or three or four key processes . . . major things that they do,” he said, “the executive director could not give me an answer. She’s been there 23 years and she could not tell me what the key processes are.”

Former Board member Pat Powers resigned after a similar experience, she said.

When a longtime employee departed after being caught smoking marijuana at a SAFE fundraising event — and then resumed working for SAFE without her drug use being addressed — Powers was concerned that personnel and substance abuse policies were either inadequate or not being followed.

“I wrote policies for them,” said Powers, the retired deputy police chief of Temple Terrace, Florida. “As far as I know they never implemented anything I gave them.”

Edney witnessed Stepp’s tight grip on the organization when he tried to resolve a property dispute between SAFE and the City of Brevard over the current site of Railroad Avenue Depot Park.

Because Edney had been negotiating as chair, the Board assigned him to continue that work after his term expired in mid 2019, when he was replaced by Gurtler.

He showed up at a meeting with then-City Manager Jim Fatland prepared to ask for $35,000 in compensation, he said, “and Sharon and Salley were standing on the steps of city hall and Sharon said, ‘I’ll be handling this.’ ”

“SAFE walked out of there with $1,” he said. “After that all happened, I said, ‘You know what? I’m done with this.’ I resigned by email and a letter.”

“Great” Policies

Stepp pointed out that Edney was no longer Board chair at the time of that meeting. And, she said, the deal was freighted with complications he failed to mention.

“That’s a whole story in itself,” she said. “I’m glad Sam thought he could get thousands of dollars.”

Both Stepp and Harris said that SAFE has solid personnel and substance abuse policies, which were required for the receipt of grants viewed by NewsBeat.

“My recollection is, those policies were great,” Harris said.

And the staff member who prompted Powers’ concerns, Stepp said, returned to work at the shelter only briefly and without Stepp knowing about it. (As executive director, it’s her job to know, Powers responded.)

To address Woodsmall’s issues, Stepp and Donaldson said that an outside consultant has since completed a strategic plan, which they could not share because it has not been approved by the Board.

The organization has completed employee surveys, although “there hasn’t been one conducted recently,” said Donaldson, who is the chair of the Board’s human resources committee.

But she also said that SAFE interviews departing employees, almost all of whom reported they were leaving for personal reasons — better opportunities, shorter commutes, the desire to be closer to family — rather than dissatisfaction with their work or SAFE.

Said Harris, who also served as Board chair in the past, “I don’t remember any terribly contentious exit interviews.”

A Missed Opportunity

Which is not true of Jeanette Wayne’s exit interview, which came in the form of an email sent directly to the Board in December.

Beside listing general complaints about the work culture quoted high in this story, it focused on the lack of training and performance metrics for her role as rape prevention educator (RPE), a job that includes teaching Safe Dates classes at county high schools.

“Although the RPE program operates under a grant, upper management never gave any explanation of its inner workings,” she wrote, and “rarely offered any feedback.”

A grant awarded by DHHS paid all of Wayne’s $48,000 salary and 10 percent of the $55,000 salary of her boss and predecessor, Rebecca Beckum, according to the contract obtained by a public record request.

Wayne said in an interview that she learned on the job with Beckum, whom she praised as her “only sanctuary” at SAFE.

“Nobody trained Rebecca and the training Rebecca gave me was based on programs she had developed herself,” she said. “We just had to figure it out ourselves.”

Still, it left her unprepared “if a kid breaks down in the class because I’ve touched on something that was sensitive or triggering,” she said. “There was no training for that, no procedure explained to us.”

And one learning opportunity was clearly denied, according to the contract. The grant paid for — and required — Beckum and Wayne to attend the “Annual Leadership Training Retreat” held last summer on the Outer Banks.

“I brought it up to Salley and she said we don’t have the money in our budget,” Wayne said. When she relayed this message to her contacts with the NC Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NC CASA), the nonprofit that helps monitor the grant, “their jaws about dropped to the ground. They were like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”

Wayne reminded Stepp about the retreat in an April 2023 email, asking, “Doesn’t the grant . . . include the expenses for a retreat?”

Yes, it does, according to a report on a January site visit from representatives of DHHS and NC CASA that confirmed SAFE had failed to meet this requirement.

Though such visits are conducted annually, according to an email to NewsBeat from a DHHS spokesperson, “SAFE's site visit was scheduled sooner than other agencies’ because of its staff turnover and because they did not attend the in-person Leadership Retreat.”

The report on this visit also appears to confirm Wayne’s points about inadequate training and communication.

Though SAFE follows state programming guidelines, the report said, it does “not have any policies in place about engaging in this capacity.” (A curriculum addressing this concern was provided after the visit, the report said.)

The report also showed “no” was checked next to the question, “Is appropriate supervision given to staff?”

Programs Director “Teesie (Stanton) does not have staff meeting notes,” the report said in the comment section about supervision. “Unclear on how often meetings take place; unclear on whether supervision takes place.”

As for the issue that helped prompt the visit and was confirmed by it — Wayne and Beckum’s failure to attend the retreat — Stepp said that was Beckum’s decision.

“It was off the coast of North Carolina and Rebecca felt that the time they spent driving there and back would be better spent doing the work of the program,” she said.

Beckum, who has since resigned, said it’s true that she had recently been weighed down with extra duties because of the recent departure of another employee. “It was a difficult time to get away,” she said.

But she never denied Wayne’s request to attend, she said — and she couldn’t have.

“I was never empowered to make those kinds of decisions,” Beckum said. “I was never empowered to make any decision with regards to the budget.”

Where’s the Money?

Cathcart at a SAFE fundraising event during his time at the organization

Neither was Cathcart, who held his job as collaborative services coordinator for ten months before his sudden resignation in April of 2019.

“What’s done with the money is always in question at SAFE,” said Cathcart, who came to the organization after a long career in law enforcement.

One of his jobs was overseeing the Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP), which teaches convicted batterers healthy methods of interacting with their partners.

Cathcart said he and the part-time DVIP instructor, Don Houts, were paid with the help of a grant from the state Department of Public Safety (DPS).

When applying for a renewal of this grant in the spring of 2019, he used an “abstract” from SAFE, which he shared with NewsBeat. It showed that Houts was paid $18 an hour, he said. But Houts provided Cathcart with a pay stub that showed he received a lower wage, $12.38 per hour.

“I put down his actual pay” in a draft of the grant application, he said, an amount reflected in a document he provided.

That prompted his “freeze-out” from upper management, he said, and concern about this discrepancy caused him to leave “in the middle of the night,” he said. “I turned in my key. I didn’t want any blame attached to the things going on there.”

“I hope SAFE resolves the lack of leadership at the executive and Board level so that no more harm is done within the community and to the SAFE staff,” he wrote in his resignation email.

Stepp, noting that the DVIP program does not currently receive outside funding, said “I don’t think there’s any truth” to Cathcart’s claims.

Did it receive a grant in 2019? “I don’t know,” she said.

A list of funded projects on the DPS website shows that SAFE received grants from 2018 to 2020 for “direct intervention services to the offenders of domestic violence.”

That was the grant Cathcart was referring to, he said.

He also had concerns about funding for a program he initiated soon after his arrival at SAFE called Men for Change.

It was a “self-sustaining” mentoring program, linking men who could model healthy relationships to younger counterparts and requiring them to contribute at least $100 to fund events, said Cathcart, who provided a roster of nearly 30 men, including successful businessmen, educators and law-enforcement leaders, who donated a total of more than $3,200.

But when he scheduled an event at Pisgah Coffee Roasters, Stepp told him no money was available and he ended up paying for the venue and coffee out of his own pocket.

Edney, one of the contributors to Men for Change, said the program had great promise to help address the root cause of domestic violence.

“People think domestic violence is a women’s problem. It’s not, it’s a men’s problem,” he said.

Which is why he was dismayed to see the program fizzle after Cathcart left.

“The thing I heard in Board meetings is that it has to raise money,” he said. “If it doesn’t raise money, we can’t do it.”

Stepp offered two other reasons SAFE didn’t continue the program. Cathcart’s departure, which left it without the necessary male leadership, and a lack of interest from participants.

“People finally said they didn’t want to be part of something to hear the same old stories over and over again,” she said. “Men started coming to me and telling me they didn’t feel their presence was making a difference and they just quit coming.”

What Happened to the Center?

Another since-abandoned program, the Transylvania County Family Resource Center, was launched in 2018 with an announcement in the Transylvania Times.

SAFE had received $100,000 from nonprofit Women for Women as well as other grants to create the Center, which was to house representatives from law enforcement and social service agencies, prosecutors and Pisgah Legal Services, the announcement said.

The Center, at a small county-owned building on 221 S. Gaston Street across from the Transylvania County Library, was designed to be easily accessible, so “the victims do less of the moving around and the agencies are able to come to them,” the announcement said.

It took a while to get going, said Tracy Bodenhamer, who had worked in several jobs at SAFE before being assigned to run the Center in 2019.

“I had to work hard to pick up the pieces that were getting lost,” she said. “I felt like SAFE wasn’t making the community collaboration work, so I went in and did that so we would get the referrals so people would get the help.”

Shortly before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, the number of women accessing the Center had climbed from just a handful monthly to between 20 and 25.

“I think her perspective is pretty accurate,” said Madeline Offen, of Pisgah Legal Services. “We had an office in the Resource Center and I worked with Tracy really closely.”

“We had coordinated meetings about cases,” she said, referring to the different agencies at the Center. “I think it was definitely starting to run in an efficient way. It’s a great model.”

Neither Donaldson nor any of the SAFE employees interviewed remember the Center reopening after the pandemic and Stepp said she doesn’t remember exactly when it closed “because I didn’t run the Family Resource Center.”

One of the issues with its closure was statewide changes in funding for nonprofits, Stepp wrote in an August 2022 email that informed County Manager Jaime Laughter that SAFE no longer had use for the building.

A number of nonprofits were due to lose key grants, Stepp wrote, and “unfortunately, this is also true for SAFE. The funding for the Transylvania County Family Resource Center will end on October 1, 2022.”

Another factor, Stepp said, was the lack of support from other agencies.

“It was a good concept but it didn’t work for us, it didn’t work for the collaborative partners,” she said. “The intention behind it was, the partners would run it, but basically SAFE ended up being the only ones there.”

A “Vindictive” Response to Covid

Watkins in her role as a SAFE child advocate

Bodenhamer couldn’t answer questions about the fate of the Center, she said, because she left shortly after the onset of the pandemic — or, more specifically, after a discouraging Covid-related meeting with SAFE staff leadership.

“We had all busted our asses to continue to function and we were told we weren’t doing enough,” she said. “And I was like, you know, I think this is it. The camel’s back has been broken . . . I mean, it was a ship that was sinking and I was bucketing out water and I just wasn’t ready to go down.”

Virginia Watkins, Corey Gafnea and Lynne Michael, a community outreach educator, also left at about the same time, not because they wanted to, they said, but because they were forced to resign by SAFE’s response to Covid, detailed in an email Stepp sent to SAFE staffers on March 19, 2020.

After employees had exhausted their accumulated paid time off and an additional three weeks of unpaid leave available by written request, stated the email shared by Watkins, “any employee who does not return to his or her assigned work . . . will be considered to be resigned from employment at SAFE.”

And by “return,” Stepp wrote in bold type, she meant return to the office: “NO employee will be allowed to work from their homes; and therefore, will NOT be paid for doing so. The work of SAFE is intended to be done at the employee’s assigned worksite.”

That wasn’t possible for Michael, who had a medical condition that increased her risk of death from contracting Covid, she said, sharing a note from her primary care provider confirming that fact. Nor was it an option for Watkins, she said, because she had to care for her young son and was in daily contact with her mother, whose age put her at heightened risk from the virus.

SAFE could have tried to adjust duties to allow remote work, as other organizations receiving RPE grants did at the time, Gafnea wrote in an email. If that wasn’t possible, SAFE could have allowed them to depart on terms that met a key NC Department of Commerce requirement for approval of benefits: “Be unemployed due to no fault of your own.”

One option would be layoffs. Stepp didn’t choose that because “we wanted people to be able to do their jobs,” she said. “People were given choices about whether they wanted to continue to work. A few employees decided they didn’t want to do that.”

The need for SAFE was greater than ever because so many potential victims were stuck at home with abusers, she said, and “we wanted to be there for them.” That meant keeping the office open, she said, and added “there was no work done remotely.”

Which is seemingly contradicted by an email sent to staff on April 23, 2020, which stated that because Transylvania had recorded its first Covid case, “the main office will be closed to the public and services will be provided via telephone only.”

But it’s not just that SAFE failed to work with employees facing Covid-related challenges, Watkins said. It actively fought their efforts to obtain unemployment benefits, even though, in North Carolina, Covid-related claims did not impact unemployment insurance rates paid by employers.

As a single mother, Watkins was eventually able to start receiving those benefits. But she later received a letter informing her that SAFE had unsuccessfully challenged her eligabilty. Then came another one saying it had prevailed.

“There was nothing to be gained on her part . . . and still, she fought it and lost, and fought it again,” Watkins said of Stepp. “I had to cough up $8,000 (in reimbursement). Back to the government for nothing.”

“It was vicious,” she said. “It was so vindictive.”

NewsBeat sent Stepp a request for a follow-up interview, with the intent of seeking more details on issues such as this one and offering her the chance to check her quotes for accuracy over the phone.

Stepp replied with a text asking for an emailed copy of the story prior to publication “so I can review it with my attorney.”

NewsBeat declined to do so.

The Impact of Turnover

Even former staffers with a nuanced view of SAFE said its work culture contributed to their departures.

Jennifer Kerr, the former manager of victim services, said she had served as the executive director for another organization and understood the challenges of Stepp’s position.

“I had been in her shoes and knew what it was like to have too few people and too much to do,” she said.

But “one of the things that made me want to leave,” she said, came in the aftermath of an epic snow storm that stranded a young staffer at the shelter. Kerr was able to join her only by driving her brother-in-law’s dump truck until it became mired in the snow and then walking through the storm up the shelter’s long driveway.

She and the young assistant remained at the shelter, swapping shifts to help care for clients and their children, for about three days, Kerr said.

“We didn’t get a single thank you,” she said. Instead, she said, upper management was worried about overtime.

“I was told by Salley — well, Teesie told me but she said Salley was the one who sent her to tell me — that the shelter assistant shouldn’t have any more shifts that week,” Kerr said.

Some former employees counted about one firing or resignation per month in the past year. “I doubt that,” said Stepp but declined to provide documents quantifying departures.

Nora Sogren, who worked part-time at the shelter for about five years after retiring to Brevard from New York City, said she saw how this churn of employees came to diminish the service provided by Stacey’s House.

“We had some very qualified shelter supervisors but I think we had seven supervisors during the time I was there,” she said.

And the last one she worked for, she said, was not qualified. 

“She was a lovely girl but she didn’t have any experience,” Sogren said, and when residents came to this supervisor with requests she would talk to them dismissively or roll her eyes after they walked away.

“I didn’t care how she talked to the residents,” Sogren said. “These are very needy girls. Very needy. If you can’t listen to them, what are you doing in a job like that?”

Stepp said she hadn’t heard of this concern and asked, “Why didn’t Nora talk to somebody about that?”

Sogren did, she said, which is probably why she was dismissed.

“I voiced my opinion twice and then they let me go. They claimed I didn’t fill out the paperwork properly,” she said, “But I worked 50 years in the corporate world so I think I know how to fill out paperwork.”

Time to Go?

Another impact of high turnover relates to a touchy subject at SAFE, Stepp’s eventual retirement, Edney said.

He recognized the difficulty of her job, he said, and during his time on the Board he identified staffers with the “strengths and capabilities” to develop the skills needed to assume leadership in the future.

“Invariably those people would end up leaving SAFE,” he said, “and I saw that as a dangerous trend.”

Both Edney and Harris recalled that the Board discussed Stepp’s retirement and said she seemed to agree to future departure dates.

“And when that time came, that can was kicked down the road,” Harris said, “and it ended up being kicked down the road every year until I was off the Board.”

Not true, said Stepp, who said she has never announced her retirement, “not to any Board member.”

She refused to confirm her age, listed as 72 on public records aggregation sites. And she bristled when told that several former Board members and even some current ones said it is time for her to step aside.

“Are you saying I’m so old I’m incompetent?” she asked.

But the problems with SAFE are not about Stepp’s age and the motivation for speaking out is not to criticize her personally, Watkins said. The larger issue is the effectiveness of an organization that should be filling a vital role in Transylvania County, she said.

“The need in the community is clearly there, and it’s not going to be met until (SAFE) has new leadership.”

Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com