“Sadly, we had a client who was murdered in February,” said SafeNest CEO Liz Ortenburger, when asked to give an example of why the nonprofit shelter for domestic violence survivors needs the new facility it’s developing, One Safe Place.
Ortenburger continued, “Her abuser was arrested, but because she needed financial support from him, she did not follow through with pressing charges, and he was ultimately released. And then in February, as she began to run out of money and resources, she called him to help her move … and he murdered her in front of her three young children. This is a tough story, and it's difficult, I'm sure, for folks to listen to, but the realities of all this are, here's somebody who engaged with us for services, knew the basic outline, but because what we had wasn't tangible in terms of — like, she needed moving help, she needed financial resources, she needed housing, and we weren't able to put that all together for her in a really comprehensive bucket — she was murdered really as a result of that. So, that haunts me. You know, I think all the time, how can we do this work better? But that is certainly one that will stick with me forever.”
Reliable data on sexual violence is scarce. Different related crimes — from intimate partner abuse to sexual assault to sex trafficking — often overlap. They may go unreported. In some cases, the victims themselves are criminalized. But one thing seems certain, Nevada has high rates of these crimes. According to the World Population Survey, the state has the second-highest per-capita rate of human trafficking, including sex trafficking, in the U.S. The Nevada Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence counted nearly 29,000 total victims in its most recent report. And those numbers have been consistently high for years.
Ortenburger describes the situation as “epidemic.” She said, “While the World Health Organization designated violence against women as an epidemic in 2017, what we see in Clark County [is], our rates of domestic and sexual violence are incredibly high. We had 56 homicides related to domestic violence last year. We are at 34 homicides at the last homicide report I received this year. So … if we stay linear, that will be more than 56 homicides in Clark County.”
On July 26, Nevada officials finalized a $5 million loan to SafeNest for its One Safe Place. That will be added to $9 million that SafeNest had already received in American Rescue Plan funds. The nonprofit says it will need to raise another $6 million to complete the project.
What will the new $20 million complex offer? Ortenburger says, “By bringing all of the services that a domestic violence or sexual violence survivor needs together into one location, what happens is, we put a multi-disciplinary team around the survivor” and offer them what they need to be safe and move on from their abusers. She describes the “campus” as having four buildings and being segmented into three focus areas: survivor resources, education and workforce development, and abusive partner programming. The last one is meant to rehabilitate abusers through therapy and other support. “Many of our clients return to their offender for one reason or another,” Ortenburger says, “but one of those reasons is that ‘I love them and I want to raise our family together, but I want the violence to stop.’”
Meanwhile, in Boulder City, St. Jude’s Ranch for Children is developing a new $25 million campus for survivors of child sex trafficking. Called the Healing Center, it’s expected to open in September. St. Jude’s CEO Christina Vela described the center’s approach as the first of its kind.
“Certainly, a lot of people across the country are having to step up and innovate and think creatively about how to solve [this] growing issue across our country,” she said. “In our community, and specifically in Nevada, we do not have that one-stop place for restoration and healing for children specifically.” The unique aspect of it, she added, is the integration of an on-site school. “We've certainly seen places where there are charter schools or online schools, where kids can get connected to online schooling from a distance, but the fact that Clark County School District stepped up and said yes to a really innovative approach of a trauma-informed school feels to us, as much as we've researched, to be really one of a kind.”
The Healing Center encompasses nine buildings: an administration building that will include a full-service 24-hour emergency shelter with beds, showers, and living space; six homes with a total 62-child capacity; and a variety of therapeutic areas, such as gardens, a tortoise habitat, a labyrinth, a yoga studio, and more. “We've gone to great distances to really create beautiful space,” Vela says.
The center is for children 18 and younger, who will be referred or dropped off, primarily by government entities such as Clark County Department of Family Services or Juvenile Justice, or law enforcement part. Currently, Vela notes, children who are being trafficked by abusers, family members, or others have no dedicated place to go other than criminal detention, hospitals, and mental health institutions. “We know that this kind of sexual violence, this kind of psychological trauma, really does require something extra, and that's what we will be providing at the Healing Center in partnership with lots of other supportive services,” she said.
Vela and Ortenburger admit that their organizations do sometimes compete for a limited pool of grant funding and charitable donations, but this doesn’t stop them from collaborating where it makes sense to help victims.
Asked if it’s tough to raise awareness of sexual violence, including trafficking, in a city that relies on travel and tourism as its main economic driver, Ortenburger said, “I don't think it's hard to raise awareness. I think it's hard to get people to care. And Christina and I work with similar populations in that, largely, my clients are low-income, Black and brown women, and, largely, girls that are trafficked, and boys as well, are low-income kiddos, undocumented kiddos that are Black and brown. And our society does not yet sort of hold equal value to this. … That's a tough message, I'm sure, for everybody listening to hear. But the fact is, there's a reason people target these kids, [and it’s] because they don't have a footprint.”
She added, “This speaks to some of like the great work that I think is coming out of the sad aftermath of George Floyd: Where are these biases, and where are the unseen populations that may be suffering without representation at the table to get services? That's what we continue to try to remind Las Vegas. Las Vegas is phenomenal. We're this entertainment hub of the world. As the city grows, we have to grow up and understand every life here has value. How are we making sure that every life here is cared for? And that's really the work Christina and I do, and many others, in building out that social safety net, so that those that are suffering in our city or in our county have got the resources they need, so that that suffering can stop”
Guests: Liz Ortenburger, CEO, Safenest; Christina Vela, CEO, St. Jude's Ranch for Children
