Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Liz Ortenburger Interview - Part 1

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

This week, we're bringing you a special interview with Liz Ortenburger, CEO of Safenest, the largest DV agency in the state of Nevada, serving at-risk people since 1977. We're fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with someone like Liz, who is on the front lines of the fight against domestic violence here in Las Vegas, the most lethal city, in the most lethal county, in the most lethal state in the country.https://sinspod.co/125Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.Domestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms

To listen ad-free, visit sinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. Over the past few years, we've shared dozens of stories of victims of domestic violence. We've discussed the challenges survivors face and the many times that the justice system has failed to protect families. And we're always asking the question, what more can be done to prevent this. And we're concerned about what the experience is really like for victims when they ask for help. This week, we have a very special episode. For the very first time on Sins and Survivors, we are bringing you an interview with one of the experts working on the front lines

of the domestic violence crisis here in Las Vegas. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas True Crime Podcast, where we cover stories of domestic violence, missing persons, and unsolved cases. I'm your host, Sean. And I'm your co-host, John. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, welcome. We're happy to have you here. We started the podcast in October of 2023 during Domestic Violence Awareness Month to really bring attention to the 40-plus domestic violence homicides that happen in Las Vegas each year and to address some of the myths and realities of domestic violence, such as issues around stalking, orders of protection. victim blaming, and most importantly, to provide resources to folks who need them.

We're very focused on getting family's answers. While we often cover domestic violence, we also cover missing persons from the Las Vegas area and unsolved homicide cases. About 10% of the cases we cover are from outside of the Las Vegas area. And most of the time when that happens, it because a family has approached us and asked us to cover their story. So over the past three years, we've produced nearly 150 episodes, including covering the murder of five-year-old Mason Dominguez. His stepdad Brandon Tozland was arrested for that crime and were all waiting for the trial to start next year. Many people may be familiar with that case because Tozland was arrested after Mason's mom had her young daughter sneak a note in her shoe to school to give to her teacher because the family was essentially being held captive in their home.

We also did a four-part series on Thomas Randolph, who is a convicted murderer. He's known as the Black Widower. He's been married six times and four of his wives are dead. And we also have our very popular multi-part series on the mysteries of Lake Mead, missing persons, unidentified, and unsolved homicides. And this summer, we're going to bring you even more stories from Lake Mead, so you don't want to miss that. At Sins and Survivors, we strive to bring you ethical true crime stories with the larger purpose of raising awareness and helping families. Please like and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. If you visit sinspod.com slash subscribe for just $1 a month, you can get all of our weekly episodes ad free. And for $3 a

month, you get all that, plus our additional weekly bonus episodes where John and I go behind the scenes to discuss what went into making the episode. This week, though, is a little bit different. We recorded the entire episode on video, which will be available on YouTube and Patreon for all of our listeners to enjoy. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or some other platform and you're only hearing the audio, you can go to find us on YouTube and watch the video at Sincspod.co slash YouTube. And today, as we said, Liz Ordenberger is here to answer our questions and questions from our subscribers. We're going to welcome Liz to the podcast in just a minute, but first, I want to share that I've

known Liz for at least eight years, and we've worked together in different capacities throughout that time. And John, you know Liz as well from fundraisers and different events. Liz is an amazing person, and she knows so much about everything to do with domestic violence. We were really lucky to have her on the show, to have her answer our questions. Before we welcome her on, let me share her bio. Liz Ortonberger is the CEO of Safeness, which is Nevada's largest and most comprehensive nonprofit addressing domestic and sexual violence, and she's a thought leader, redefining how communities prevent and respond to abuse. For more than two decades, she has championed the safety of women

and children, bringing bold vision to a field often shaped by reactive solutions. At Safeness, Liz leads a multi-million dollar organization, delivering an integrated continuum of care, including emergency response, prevention, education, housing, legal advocacy, offender intervention, all designed to disrupt cycles of violence at their roots. Under her leadership, Safeness has expanded beyond traditional service delivery to address the broader epidemic through strategic partnerships with law enforcement,

policymakers, health care systems, and community leaders. Known for challenging conventional narratives, Liz advocates for a shift from punishment to prevention, from survivor-only approaches to a system-wide accountability, and from silence to truth-telling. She is a PhD candidate in public policy. and administration at Walden University, and she holds an MBA from IESC school in Barcelona. All right. Let's bring Liz on. Hey, everyone. We're here with Liz. Welcome. Liz. Thanks for being here.

Welcome. Thank you for having me. We got some good feedback from some of our listeners. They're really excited that we were going to have you on. And I was just thinking our audience is all over the country all over the world. So I was thinking to start out, can you just walk us through what domestic violence looks like in Nevada right now and where the agency you work for, Safeness, fits into that picture? Yeah, absolutely. So Nevada has historically been one of the highest per capita states in the country for domestic violence homicides. But recently, the new FBI sort of Learcat data, which we're able to dig into, also expose that Nevada is the highest per capita of rates of violence perpetrated by an intimate partner, close friend, or family member in all crime categories. That includes like arson, property damage, of course, homicide, we already talked about, physical abuse.

So Nevada has an incredibly high rate of domestic violence happening, and then we have a corollary high rate of domestic violence homicides. So this is an incredibly lethal place to do this work. And anybody that knows geography of Nevada knows we're famous for Las Vegas, which is where 80% of our population kind of lives in Clark County. And so by the fact that Nevada is so lethal, Clark County is actually the most lethal county in the country. And the city of Las Vegas is the most lethal city in the country for domestic violence homicides. One of the questions we often get is really about the survivor and the survivor's experience. So can you talk a little bit about when someone reaches out to the DV hotline, what are they typically dealing with in that moment? Yeah. So interestingly enough, we started dig into our hotline data a couple of years ago. And I think that, you know, for the person who doesn't live and work in this world constantly, the thought would be, oh, somebody calls the hotline once, gets the resources they need, and then they go about their business. But actually, our average calls to the hotline by one client are about 30.

We have some clients that call us over 100 times, some clients that call us three, four, five times. But our average participant is calling us at least 30 times within a 12-month window. And so what are they dealing with? So first, usually kind of looks like, hey, is this domestic violence, right? Like, is what I'm experiencing as bad as I think it is or I'm trying to minimize it? They're just trying to stabilize and understand what the relationship is that they're in. They may also be calling on a technical issue. Maybe an arrest was made at their home and they're trying to understand what the process is.

So they're entering the window at that point. What our advocates do, which is phenomenal, is they start to walk them through. Let's do a safety plan. Let's talk about what are their resources. And they're planting all of these seeds of things you might need along your journey to exit domestic violence or whatever your journey looks like. And so that's what happens is we're really just start at the beginning with that. survivor wherever they're at and then we walk through what's next and then oftentimes like I said they're calling back they're getting more resources they're trying to get more understanding trying to understand

what their rights are and find safety I'm going to ask you next the question that you and I have talked about many times but it's about leaving because everyone always asks why don't they just leave so can you talk a little bit about what people are missing when they ask that question well first of all it's the wrong question, right? I think the right question would be, why does that abusive partner think it's okay to abuse, right? Like, where did we get the idea that abusing women in particular, but men are also abused, that abusing people in our lives is okay. So I would frame it that way. I think also, you know, because we live and breathe this work, we understand what society does is say, okay, you're a survivor of domestic violence. Why don't you leave? Why don't you get a temporary protection order? Why don't

you find a job? Why don't you get the kids into their own house? Why don't you get stable? Why don't you? Why don't you? Why don't you? Why don't you? And there's about 10,000, why don't you to a survivor. We need to ask one question in domestic violence, and that's of the abusive partner. And why don't you stop abusing? That needs to be the question. What do we need to do to get you to stop abusing? Because then, guess what? Domestic violence stops. And that's really what the movement at large, I think, is really missed from the 1970s on forward, and then we've passed all these crime bills, in particular, the omnibus crime bill of the 1990s. It has really said domestic violence work is about the survivor and the abusive partner work is left to the criminal legal system. And that has not fared well, particularly for our survivors who are marginalized, low income, which is sort of the majority of the space that we work in. So, yeah, so the question of why doesn't she just leave? is really easily answered in this way. Women are most often murdered when they are getting ready to leave or in the three to 12 months after they have left. And our 19th homicide happened two nights ago,

that was a mom trying to leave with her kids and she was murdered by her abuser and husband, right? So what people don't understand and a great metaphor that I heard from one of my mentors in the space is, you know, if you're in a box with a fire-breathing dragon, what do you do to survive? You may make friends with the dragon. And that is the space a lot of our survivors have to live in because they don't either have the resources or the pathways out of that violence or they're so afraid that if they leave, it is going to mean not only potentially their murder, but maybe the murder of their kids, the murder of a beloved family pet, or the murder of other people in their lives. On the podcast, we often remind people, listeners, and you just mentioned that leaving is the most dangerous time. And that's the point when the risk of violence is the highest. So one of the questions we get is what changes in that moment? What makes the risk higher in that moment? Yeah. So when we think about abusive partners that are likely to murder, we have to kind of categorize abusive partners in different ways. But when we think about the category of abusive partners who are likely of committing murder,

We're looking at extreme narcissism, right? These are folks for whom they believe they have an entitlement to a life different than the one they're living typically, that they have an entitlement to be taken care of by their spouse or girlfriend or whatever the dynamic is. They feel very much that the world needs to cater to them. Well, when I'm getting ready to leave or have left, I have said to you, hey, this world is not about you and you alone. and you've lost now that power to control me.

Well, what's the best way to get that power back? It's to kill you. And we have horrific stories of things that have happened and how these murders have happened and when kids are involved, when it's a murder, suicide. There are a lot of different dynamics to how that end of life piece can happen. But it is fundamentally about me as the abuser, the narcissist, and the controller in that relationship, ultimately taking all that control back. And whether or not that includes my life in a murder suicide being taken as well, I don't care because that is the narcissistic sort of tendency of an abusive partner who will murder.

Stories about mass murders and family annihilations have been in the news in the past couple weeks. And that's something that John and I have been talking about as well. Can you talk a little bit about why domestic violence is a common factor in mass shootings? I guess I'll ask it. Yeah, great question. So part of it is the definition of a mass shooting is four or more people killed, obviously, with a firearm. When we think about what I just explained in terms of narcissism and an abusive partner, if I'm going in to kill you, I don't care who's around you. If that's family members, if that's friends, if that's a new boyfriend, whatever that dynamic looks like. So oftentimes in these domestic violence situations, bystanders are killed alongside, which elevates it to. a level of mass shooting. But an additional argument in that space is when we think about the rage inside someone that would murder the person that they are supposed to be partnered with and love with or somehow connected to, whether it be through children or whatever, when we think about the rage

of that person to murder that person and all the narcissism, that ability to carry out a larger mass shooting is also there, right? And so when we look at some of the homegrown mass shooters, like the Orlando nightclub shooting is one I talk about quite a bit. He had domestic violence all over his record. In fact, Bill Maher did a phenomenal sort of special on gun violence and the biggest red flag is domestic violence. The problem is we still don't have a mature court system that's taking domestic violence as seriously as the outcomes are for mass shootings, cop killing, and certainly domestic violence homicide. So, yeah, that's, that's, that. That's the correlation. It's twofold, right? It's that if I have a gun and I'm narcissistic and I'm going to murder you, I'm going to murder whoever's around you. And that rage factor that I'm happy to take out, you know, however many people that looks like. They've never proven it specifically here in Las Vegas. But when you look at the dynamics of the shooter, the October 1 shooter, it is likely he was abusive and abused, quite frankly, as well. But it's likely that he was abusive to his partner. So to me, that brings up the next.

question I have, which is about warning signs. So what are the warning signs you see where you think this situation could turn deadly? One of the examples we often give, but it's so obvious, is strangulation because there's so much correlation with that, as Sean has taught me. But are there other more like insidious subtle cues and warning signs that you see besides like the incredibly obvious ones like strangulation? What other warning signs are there? So recently, we've started trying to put together some better, better educational protocols for young women and young men in particular who are starting to enter those dating relationships about what could some early warning signs be? Because strangulation, yes. If we're there, we got to get you out. This is

an escalation to homicide. The other big one is always a gun in the home. But if we start to look at the more subtle, like the gaslighting. So oftentimes, even just saying to a young person, pick a topic, that you both disagree on and is your voice heard, right? Or do they railroad you and gaslight you, you know, until you give up because you're so tired of having this argument? Gaslighting is a big one. Being able to argue in a way that it doesn't become, you know, it is very different. Sean and I were to get into an argument about some topic. We're going to have a professional dialogue. We're going to hear each other. We're going to listen. We're going to sort of say, well, agree to disagree. But if that person isn't even allowing that space to happen where you can have an argument without you then degrading the other person, trying to tear them down, really picking at them, these are some of the early warning signs.

Like, what does that communication look like? And then, you know, it can escalate from there in terms of like no one's abusive on day one. Love bombing is a huge one. Like, I love romance novels, but I'm astute enough now every time I read one, I'm like, oh my God, this is the start of the very bad. relationship because all you see is this insane love bombing and this like just massive emotional roller coaster of all this stuff. That kind of stuff is so exciting, especially when you're young and all the dopamine in your brain and all this stuff is happening. Starting to just add in though, can we have a civil conversation about something we disagree on? And if the answer there is no,

be ready to walk away. Because I think a lot of times we start to think as young, women, and certainly, I mean, I'm in my 50s, I probably wouldn't still make the same mistake as, oh, I can help him. He's abusive because he was abused as a child. They're trying to use the excuse for their bad behavior based on their childhood. The fact of the matter is, everybody needs to understand, abuse is a choice. Yes, I may have had an appurrent childhood, but I'm an adult now. An abuse, and if I choose to abuse, whether that's physical, emotional, it's a choice. And so, yes, he can choose or she can. choose not to do that. And emotional abuse, I think, is much more gender neutral than physical abuse.

Physical abuse generally, we kind of see it in a way that it's female victims and male abusers. That's about 8515. But emotional abuse for young men out there is the same. Like, can you have an argument? Can you have a heated argument without that person tearing you down? People take arguments well outside the boundaries of the argument. We're in a conversation about this and all of a sudden you're talking about something horrible about my physique, right? Those are really, the way we argue is such a blueprint for how we respect and treat each other. That would be my biggest early warning sign for folks that are entering relationships. I think that's really important to remember and definitely something like we always talk about talking to people when they're young.

Before they even have their first relationship, what to look for and how to model what a healthy relationship looks like. Yeah. Yeah. And for parents, I often say, like, watch the Gilmore girls or watch, and that's if my daughter and I watch that, but with your son, watch stranger things. Any of these shows all have dynamic, multifaceted relationships for which there are parts that are healthy and parts that are unhealthy. And then just talk about it. It doesn't have to be this huge thing. Like, how did you feel about the way he spoke to her? You know, what are your thoughts on that? You know, do you, you know, those are really kind of important, just conversations to have with your kiddos, or if you're like a youth, you know, Girl Scout troop leader or Boys and Girls Club employee, someone like that, having conversations with the way

people treat each other, we're so reactionary to like, we don't like bullies, right? Let's understand why a bully is bullying. Let's everybody back up. Let's have a conversation and understand behavior more than just reacting to the maybe negative outcome of behavior. I think we can get to a better place. And young people really need to see what positive relationships look like. They're so devoid of that. And YouTube is not providing it. Neither is any social media outlet. And while I just said, you know, watching things, those are just conversation starters. Making sure your home life, the parents, I think this is really hard. You know, there's an adverse childhood experience questionnaire that we can all take and reflect back on the time before we were 18. We know that

know that kids with four more adverse childhood experiences, and I think it's a 10-point scale, are likely to have trauma as an adult. Take that questionnaire for your kiddo. So if you're in a home that you're not particularly like you're concerned about, understand the trauma that your kids are absorbing. That doesn't mean you pack bags and leave today, but it means that your kids are absorbing some trauma that you need to figure out how to mitigate. And there are a lot of great resources, certainly in Clark County to do that, can call Safe Nest and we'll help you navigate. But it's important to know that these things are generational and there is a way to break that cycle. Absolutely. It's almost like you have to show them like for Sean and I, we would like show a

display to our son that we get along, like we get along most of the time. But when we don't get along, we have to model what good fighting is too. Like if he can be there when we have a fight and it's respectfully done, I think that's almost as important as a day at Disneyland. You have to model what it's like when things get hard. And that's important. It's important for your kids to see you argue. That is, you know, I think we try to bubble wrap our kids, right? And I always say, you know, we have a lot. We had a lot of drownings in Las Vegas, right? And so we've got all these city ordinances around. You got to put a fence up. You got to have locking doors. You got to have sirens. You got to have all these things. And guess what? Kids were still drowning. And now the more content temporary view is teach your babies how to swim, teach your babies how to float. And your kids are going to grow up in a world with people that are good, people that are bad, people that are abusive, people that are complicated. If you can model at home how we treat each other even at times of stress, you know, even when we, like I have certainly, I am a single mom, I've got two kiddos. I have certainly snapped in the car when I can't figure out where I'm going and one of them is

asking me the most assonine question about what's for dinner next week. Like, I don't know. It's okay to have those moments and then say, hey, I'm really sorry. I snapped like that. I was stressed, right? And apologize, right? Apologizing, showing, especially for men, showing some of that vulnerability is really important. We will just have a healthier set of kiddos if we can all, if we can all do some iteration of that, whatever works in your household. I always say that it's important to. admit when you're wrong. I mean, not for me, because I'm not wrong, but for people who, I'm just kidding, but for people who are wrong, it's important to admit, like, when you recognize

you're wrong, I do that with Nate all the time. Like, recently, it was Sean's birthday. I was like, bring the present down and I'll wrap it. And I went in my office. I didn't see it. And I gave him a hard time about it. And he was like, nope, it's there. I just didn't see it. And I immediately said, I'm really sorry. I definitely shouldn't have said that. You were, you were right. I apologize. I was wrong. I think that goes a long way. Don't be afraid to be wrong. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the study. Even, like, even if you physically abuse your child, let's say you hit your child out of anger, right? Not saying anyone who's done that, but it happens, right? The research around kids' brain growth and the trauma related to that, when a parent apologizes after and says, I'm so sorry, whatever, right? Don't, but they take responsibility.

even in situations of abuse, the kids recover very, very differently than if it's ignored, right? I come from a British family, so any emotion is ignored. Like, that's how we grow up in British families. Like, oh, we'll just ship you off to boarding school and everything will be fine, right? But there's a lot of studies to show that repression is, you know, and so kids learn that, right? Like, oh, something bad happened. We just don't talk about it. That particularly for boys is so, girls vocalize very differently.

boys will stuff it down. And those emotions come bubbling out at times that they might not have control of, particularly before the age of 25 when their frontal lobe isn't fully functional yet. But even just showing that, modeling that, like, I'm so sorry that happened. And that was on me. I made a horrible mistake, giving them a hug, telling them you love them. The outcome of that abusive incident is very, very different for that child than hit you. You go to your room. and we don't talk until tomorrow morning, right? And then it's never addressed because everybody's embarrassed that it happened. Yeah, that's important for folks to understand. I love that. I'm glad that we got to talk about what we can do in our own lives and what we can do in our own families to help address the epidemic of domestic violence in some way and give our kids some kind of protection and skills when they get older. I want to pivot a little bit to talk more about the system. And we were talking a little bit about high-risk offenders and how things can turn deadly. So I guess

this is kind of like a multi-part question, but where is the system breaking down? Are we not identifying and prioritizing those dangerous offenders? Why aren't we intervening earlier in those kinds of cases? Yeah. Good questions. You know, my thought, so in Las Vegas, we arrest 30% of the time a domestic violence 911 call is made. And that's that's that's fine. Those are the cases that have probable cause, right? So there's signs of violence in the scene, somebody's injured in some way. That's the number of times we're making an arrest. So the first place our system makes a mistake is not addressing the 70% with non-arrest. There was enough that happened here that a 911 call was made. That family, whether they wanted or not, some resources

need to be deployed there. So that could be as little as leaving a postcard behind. from Safeness or the like agency with resources and support, a little reminder that when there's an arrest made, it has a financial impact on a home. Let's help you before the system has to come back. So if we can keep people from being justice system involved, especially low levels of violence, that's a win. Then we go to the 30% where an arrest is made. So the first breakdown is that we're using what's called a lethality assessment protocol, the lap, on scene. Lapp is actually, a tool that's meant for agencies like Safeness to help survivors assess their safety or unsafety in a scene. It screens in 80% of abusers as high risk. Courts, if everybody's high risk, nobody's high risk, right?

Switching that to a Dale, the danger assessment law enforcement, screens in 20% of abusers as high risk. That's going to start to pinpoint for the courts who they need to focus on. In correlation with that, anybody that has, so that's the first way to fix it. The next step is, that a survivor needs to get a domestic violence forensic exam called a Daffy, domestic abuse forensic exam. They need to get a strangulation exam if they have been strangled and a sexual assault exam if there's been sexual assault involved in the last three days of their time. If we don't get the medical exams, it becomes much harder to prosecute these cases

when inevitably a survivor is like, I'm done with this. I'm out, right? But we still want to prosecute these highly lethal offenses. So we need to collect the medical evidence and we need to tell a survivor what support, medical support they need to get beyond that exam so that they're safe. So that's on scene and immediately after that domestic violence incident. So the next place, right, so in Nevada it's then a 12-hour hold. So an arrest is made, abusers on hold for 12 hours.

And then there, so then we have two different things happening. If you have the means to post-bail, you're being released. if you don't have the means or you have nowhere to go, so you have to be able to tell the court where you go, you are staying on a hold. So you're then held for two weeks. So now we've got job loss. Now we've got financial distress.

So at that same time, the survivor may have contacted us for an emergency temporary protection order while they're incarcerated or they want to get a temporary protection order. This is the second or third or fourth place of system. failure, our family court judges, we have a really high denial rate on temporary protection orders. So my first, as a survivor, my first interaction beyond police with the system and I'm denied a temporary protection order, guess how much I want to be involved with you moving forward, right? So one big part for Clark County is getting our family court to function appropriately,

expeditiously and with the right training of judges so that they can make better decisions. And that's also where that Dale assessment is much more helpful than the lap. And then if the case does go forward as a misdemeanor or a felony, misdemeanor, you know, Nevada is a Second Amendment state. So if you're going through with a misdemeanor domestic violence, you're going to have a jury trial, getting finding enough jurors, training jurors, the whole, everything that's involved with that is really complex. We have very few of them. Most everything gets pled down into, they'll either take a lesser charge or it gets down into a simple battery and gets booked to that way.

But what we're missing is the felony cases. So strangulation in Nevada is a felony offense. We have about 3,000 felony cases a year. I cannot tell you, but I would tell you I think this is a part where the system fails. I can't tell you how many of those get actually tried as felony cases. What's happening a lot is those are getting pled down into misdemeanor, and then they're being remanded with six weeks of classes. So now I have someone with a known high risk that's getting into 26 weeks of classes

with misdemeanor DV when they really should be at felony DV, and that's dealt with very differently. So multiple parts of failure. And then, of course, our court systems are set up to punish one person. They're not really set up to make the other person whole. And they really don't know how to deal with people that are in a relationship. So like, if I get hit by a drunk driver, I am not spending Thanksgiving with that person, right? But domestic violence, we're so intertwined. So the court's overall understanding of how to navigate a relationship in which by the time it gets to criminal court, there's a high likelihood that that couple is back together. Typically, that can be because of financial reasons. That's the biggest reason we have documented. But it's also because maybe we share

kids together. Maybe I love you. Maybe our church got involved and said we need to work through this. Whatever the reason is. But the court doesn't know how to do this. The court also doesn't know how to look for systematic power and control. The court is related to the incident for which you're there. They can try to create that case, the district attorney can try to create that longstanding power and control. But, you know, I would ask folks, with a lot more money, how did that go for, you know, in the P-Ditty cases? How does that go in all of these cases that we see? It's, they don't believe the survivor, the survivors somehow unworthy of their support. And in most of our cases where it's low-income, it's a long, drawn-out process with no, what is the upside for me as a low-income single mom

trying to prosecute my abuser. There isn't one. It's just time. And then, you know, I'm either believed or not believed or whatever, but okay, great. And even if he does get the charge, how long is he even going to be in jail? The courts, I think we really have to think about a different way to deal with domestic violence, segment it differently, really put the resources on the highly lethal folks. But there's a lot of places for improvement. And I also think, quite frankly, and this is a mistake. of the omnibus crime bill. We've removed survivor voice from all of this. Mandatory arrest, mandatory no-drop prosecution. You know, we have not taken the survivor's voice in any of that, and then yet we expect you to be heavily engaged in the prosecution of this person. It just doesn't work for the reality of the situation. So I think some transformational justice available early in that process, that 911 call where there wasn't an arrest made, is where we really can get at some low-hanging fruit. And then we can focus on prosecuting those folks who are lethal. This is a good place to stop part one of the interview. We have so

much more to talk about next week, including questions from our subscribers. So please be sure you like and subscribe so you didn't miss all that. Thank you so much for listening. As a reminder, you can always find resources at sinspod.co slash resources. And next week, we'll be back with part two of our interview with Liz Ortenberger. Until then, remember what happens here. Happens everywhere. Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.com slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad-free.

Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at sins and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at Questions at Sins and Survivors.com. If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, Sins and Survivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research written and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording.

If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sins and survivors.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.