hreese says:

As the President and Founder I can address the posts that question our integrity and responsibility. The Kristin Brooks Hope Center is a 501 c 3 non profit in good standing, with a Board of Directors that provides oversight on all that the organization does and its leadership says. So if someone suggests that I or anyone associated with our organization is not being straight they also are impugning our volunteer Board that is very committed to suicide prevention and the Hope Centers reputation.

The first three years of 1-800-SUICIDE’s existence was paid for by the sale of Kristin’s and my marital home and proceeds from her life insurance.

In 2000 I sought out Congressional support through the advice of Tipper Gores staff so we would be able to handle the call volume their campaign on MTV was about to generate. I was advised against taking any government money and in hindsight that was our biggest mistake.

SAMHSA did freeze the grant that they later deemed was mismanaged by the American Association of Suicidology (not us as we did not manage the grant) and then decided they needed to own the 800-SUICIDE hotline for a variety of reasons none of which include how we ran the line.

We refused to donate 1-800-SUICIDE on the grounds that the feds had no ability to do real time rescue (this is a proven fact and would have cost lives in the first year of the grant had we given it to them). As important they could not nor would they assure us of protecting the confidentiality of the callers.

Instead they created a duplicative hotline and network that literally contradicted the Bush Freedom Commission findings that stated the mental health system was in a shambles and the only way to fix it without more money was to end duplication, and fragmentation.

Also our organization spent over $600,000 to maintain the real time call trace system to save lives in 2005 long after the grant money ran out. If we were irresponsible we would have turned off the system and saved our selves $600,000 which would have financially been the right and good business management decision but we chose saving lives over money.

Our organization did indeed hire my son which was not in violation of any rule or law. We were a contractor not a grant recipient.

Contractors do not need approval on who they hire nor are they bound by all the same rules that apply to grantees. That said my son like myself was a survivor and worked for less pay to help me archive the goals of the Hope Center in honor of Kristin. In ten years I received a salary averaging less than $15,000 per year and my son volunteered for three years before taking the job building the relational databases. His work and oversight saved the Hope Center and our contract in excess of $500,000 that government beltway bandits were attempting to take from us.

While the article in the Post is largely accurate the part they failed to get right was the fact that the phone bills we owed were due in large part to government interference with our telephony contractors and the fact that the SAMHSA refused to pay over $400,000 in legitmate bills. As a result of the Post article and oversight from Congress the SAMHSA reversed their position and agreed that we were indeed owed money from the grant period 2001-2004. It took 4 years and hundreds of thousands of supporters to get the SAMHSA to finally follow their own rules. The cost to KBHC was great but the cost to the suicide prevention community was far greater.

Lastly if anyone wishes to ask us any questions we have nothing to hide and will accept and answer all questions. I would ask that anyone posting statements about us reveal their affiliations and any conflicts of interest that may exist.

Thank you for your time in reading this response.

Best always,

H. Reese Butler II
President and Founder
Kristin Brooks Hope Center
1250 24th Street NW
Suite 300
Washington DC 20037
202-536-3200
reese@hopeline.com