Chattanooga's rape crisis center broke ground on a new, larger facility Monday, moving into the Dr. Carol B. Berz Family Justice Center at 5705 Uptain Road after operating with one waiting room and one medical forensic examination room. Partnership for Families, Children and Adults, which runs the center, says the relocation is a direct response to a 27% increase in forensic exams across Hamilton and Marion counties over the past three years. The new site is expected to open in summer 2027.
The urgency behind the move is tied to numbers that have been climbing for years. As reported by NewsChannel 9, Partnership completed 122 forensic exams for sexual assault and 16 for domestic violence in 2025 alone, straining a facility that had one waiting room and one medical forensic examination room, with Partnership saying it needed more space. That bottleneck is central to why the new center is being designed with double the examination capacity, which Partnership says will let survivors get timely care and reduce delays.
What Changes at the New Location
Beyond doubling clinical space, the new center is slated to offer increased privacy, improved advocacy services, and free mental health counseling for patients, according to Local 3 News. Partnership said the move to the Family Justice Center campus is meant to bring advocacy, forensic, law enforcement, and support services together so survivors can access care through what the organization described as a more coordinated response. That coordination will extend to the Children's Advocacy Center on the same campus, which serves people under 13 who experience sexual assault, while the relocated Rape Crisis Center continues to serve anyone 13 and older who has experienced sexual assault or domestic violence, per Partnership for Families, Children and Adults. Those services remain completely free of charge, the organization notes on its website.
The City of Chattanooga is partnering in the effort to support the expansion, Local 3 News reports, and operations at the current center are expected to continue without interruption during the transition to the new building. Partnership also plans to open a satellite facility in Marion County that is expected to triple capacity in that area, addressing a region the Family Justice Center campus alone can't fully reach.
A Statewide Shift in Evidence Collection
Part of the anticipated rise in demand stems from a policy change. Local 3 News reports that the DNA evidence collection window for sexual assault cases increased from five days to 10 days as of October 1, and Partnership expects that change to increase the number of survivors seeking services going forward. The outlet also noted that Tennessee has seen increasing rates of domestic violence, adding further pressure to a system already stretched thin.
That pressure has shown up statewide in the form of a now-shrinking evidence backlog. According to WJHL, Tennessee's average turnaround time for testing sexual-assault evidence fell from about 45 weeks in August 2022 to roughly 11 weeks by August 2026. The number of pending cases at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation dropped from about 20,000 to roughly 5,000 over that same four-year span, a decline of about 75%, after the agency received funding for 50 new positions following a 2022 request tied to its rape-kit backlog.
Even with that progress, the station's report notes that the need for capacity isn't going away. TBI Assistant Director Mike Lyttle said the agency will probably continue to need more people as Tennessee's population increases, a dynamic that mirrors what Partnership is now confronting on the ground in Chattanooga with its own expansion.
