Lifeline for bereaved families at risk

Center that helps victims of violence loses state funding

The office is small and unassuming, located above a bridal shop in Fields Corner. No sign alerts passersby of its existence.

But from its tiny headquarters on Dorchester Avenue, the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute has given solace to hundreds of people around the city coping with the aftermath of the killing of a loved one.

People like Janet Connors, who came in 2001 after her son was stabbed to death in a home invasion and who has since become one of the institute's four employees.

"It was healing for me," Connors said yesterday as she sat in the office. "To be able to help someone else who is going through this is healing for the rest of us."

But the institute is preparing to close its doors on Nov. 30 after 14 years of serving the grieving and angry survivors of Boston's most violent crimes. The organization lost $75,000, nearly half of its operating budget, as part of Governor Deval Patrick's $1 billion in emergency budget cuts last month.

"Where are the families going to go?" said Connors, a 58-year-old with gray hair and a soft voice.

She held a tissue and fought back tears.

"I feel like it's such a piece of the community," she said. "We're a piece that's woven into the fabric of the community, and there will be a big hole now."

Patrick's spokesman, Kyle Sullivan, said the governor managed to save some programs targeting violence, including summer jobs for troubled youth and the Shannon grants, which funds antigang initiatives.

"With a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, any number of difficult budget cuts were necessary," Sullivan said. "However, the governor was successful in protecting millions of dollars aimed at curbing urban violence across the state. . . . Where there were difficult cuts made toward the programs, we will continue to look for alternative funding options."

The institute's founder, Clementina Chery, said she is calling companies and foundations to raise money. Next Friday, the institute will co-host a photo and art exhibit at Lesley University in Cambridge that she hopes will raise more awareness about the organization. But her options and time are running out.

"We're done," Chery said. "We've turned it over to God."

The news has roiled the families who rely on the institute, and has worried law enforcement officials, who refer families to Chery after a homicide.

The organization helps people find counselors and save money on funeral costs, and it organizes an annual peace march through Dorchester. The small staff, three of whom are survivors, have created curriculum used in city schools to help children deal with losing relatives to violence and guide families through the court system. They draft funeral programs and craft buttons commemorating victims, which are seemingly ubiquitous among teenagers in the city's more dangerous neighborhoods.

"The Peace Institute promotes a message of peace that has personally touched hundreds, probably thousands, of young people," Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in a statement. "The budget crisis has affected all of us, my office included. We're all being asked to do more with less. The loss of the Peace Institute, though, would leave a terrible, terrible void."

Chery opened the center a year after her 15-year-old son, Louis Brown, was killed. He was walking to a Christmas party when feuding gangs opened fire on each other and shot Brown, an innocent bystander.

Chery said she wanted to provide a place where families would feel they could find people who understood their suffering.

"We're survivors and we're able to speak the language to families in ways that others couldn't because they haven't experienced that pain," said Milton Jones, the center's director of operations. In 1993, his 18-year-old stepson was beaten to death in Leominster by two men wielding bats.

Audrey Brown-Perkins said she comes into the office at least twice a week.

"It's like a drop-in center for me and my family," she said. Her 20-year-old son, Antoine Perkins, was shot in the head two years ago on a porch on Morton Street. His killer has not been arrested.

"I told my therapist the other day, 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like the Peace Institute has helped me more than coming to therapy,' " said Brown-Perkins, 42. "It's a place where I'm understood."

The institute also became a haven for the parents and friends of convicted killers, who would meet the families of murder victims at the institute and, in some cases, befriend them. Many people learned how to forgive at the center, Connors said.

"My guess is there would be a lot more revenge killings going on without the Peace Institute," she said.

Jones said the budget cuts have left him angry and confused. Of the 66 homicides in Boston last year, he said, 62 of the victims' families or friends went to the center for help.

"Families are referred to us by hospitals, funeral homes, you name it, police, the governor's office," he said. "They know the work we do. They want us to do the work that we do and somehow they're not getting that we need money to do it."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.