VRLC was founded in 2000 to open a new niche in legal philanthropy: asserting rape victims’ civil rights, as an essential part of limiting their pain and suffering. Susan Vickers, volunteering with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (Cat’04) while a student at Harvard Law School, recognized that there were civil legal rights of victims that were not being addressed, in the areas of privacy, immigration, education, housing, employment, disability, safety and financial compensation. She founded VRLC “to prevent a single incident of rape from ruining a victim’s entire life.” VRLC has trained over 140 attorneys, and many paraprofessionals, to handle cases pro bono, and over 40 law students on how to represent survivors’ legal rights. By opening a new area for philanthropy, VRLC has become the “go-to” authority in the field — another example of Massachusetts’ leadership in philanthropy. The U.S. Department of Justice has funded VRLC to expand its services from the Boston area to the entire Commonwealth. VRLC has trained and provided technical assistance to over 240 federally-funded organizations nationwide, convened five national conferences on the subject, and published legal manuals assisting other states in replicating these sexual assault services. VRLC will spend the next five years building the network nationwide, and you can help.