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SCLC battered women’s shelter had little occupancy for years

Raleigh Trammell’s group received nearly $745,000 in taxpayer money to run Safehouse in Jefferson Twp.

The SCLC Safehouse sits next to the Rev. Raleigh Trammell's Central Missionary Baptist Church in Jefferson Twp. The program has received almost $745,000 in government funds since 1999.

Chris Stewart/Staff photographer The SCLC Safehouse sits next to the Rev. Raleigh Trammell's Central Missionary Baptist Church in Jefferson Twp. The program has received almost $745,000 in government funds since 1999.

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Tammy Slater said she's never seen activity at the SCLC Safehouse in her many years of living in the neighborhood, nor in the six months that she's lived in a house directly behind the Safehouse which sits next to Raleigh Trammell's Central Missionary Baptist Church in Jefferson Twp.

Chris Stewart/Staff photographer Tammy Slater said she's never seen activity at the SCLC Safehouse in her many years of living in the neighborhood, nor in the six months that she's lived in a house directly behind the Safehouse which sits next to Raleigh Trammell's Central Missionary Baptist Church in Jefferson Twp.

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By Lynn Hulsey and Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writers Updated 7:21 AM Monday, February 22, 2010

Since 2006, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell’s Dayton chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has received nearly $200,000 from taxpayers for a battered women’s shelter that its federal funding application says housed 19 women and children a week.

But Montgomery County records indicate that since mid-2006, very little water has been used in the home at 5170 Derby Road in Jefferson Twp.

In fact, the property has not been a consistent user of water since June 13, 2006, said Greg Merrill, director of environmental services for Montgomery County. Records show no water usage at all from August 2007 to July 2008, he said.

Yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been providing an annual infusion of money for the shelter since 2004, and the state or county has kicked in money for the shelter since at least 1999. All told, nearly $745,000 in taxpayer money has gone to the SCLC Safehouse and its domestic violence program since 1999, according to government records and SCLC tax forms.

The SCLC’s 2010 funding application, signed by Trammell’s daughter Angela Goodwine, claimed the organization had served 225 women and children since 1988.

Efforts to reach Trammell, chairman of the Dayton SCLC, were not successful, and Goodwine declined comment.

The FBI raided SCLC’s Dayton offices and the homes of Goodwine and Trammell on Feb. 11 and have asked to meet with officials at the United Way of Greater Dayton, which administers the federal funds Trammell’s groups received.

National SCLC member Art Rocker, who met with FBI agents from Ohio and Georgia last week in Atlanta, said the probe involves the SCLC’s use of federal funds.

Tammy Slater, who lives directly behind the purported shelter in the Derby Road neighborhood, said she has seen little activity there.

“I grew up out here and I’ve never known anything to be there,” Slater said. “The most I’ve ever seen there was people mowing the lawn. I thought it was vacant all this time. It’s been years.”

Slater said battered women need more services, but it doesn’t seem that Trammell is providing them. “He’s getting all this money,” she said, “and it’s sad he isn’t using it to do good.”

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