Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Liz Ortenburger Interview - Part 2

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

This week, we're bringing you the second half of our 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/126Become 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

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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. 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. Last week, we brought you the first part of our interview with Liz Ortonberger,

CEO of the largest domestic violence agency in Nevada, and the only domestic violence shelter located in the city of Las Vegas. This week, we're bringing you the continuation of that interview. If you miss the first week, we recommend you go back and listen. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. Our typical format is a deep dive into missing person, unsolved murder, or domestic violence stories from the Las Vegas area. Our goal here is to raise awareness about these issues

and hopefully lead families to answers and always to provide resources for listeners. We put out a new episode every week, and for our subscribers, we also do a weekly bonus swing shift episode where we go behind the scenes and give you a glimpse into our process of putting the episode together.

So please like and follow the podcast on whatever platform you're listening on and we would always appreciate a five-star review if you love what you're hearing. We're part of the mission to make true crime better and we're happy to have you with us. So let's pick up where we left off last week. So one of the things that we were talking about before we met with you was around the work that Safeness does with offenders. I find that really interesting. So I have so many questions about this,

and I'm hoping you can tell us all about it. So we have questions like, how self-aware are these offenders? What is holding them back from accessing resources, seeking support, seeking treatment? Is it lack of self-awareness? Is it, you know, fear of failure, job loss, just them being narcissists? So, like, what is holding them back from accessing programs like you have at Safeness? And also, tell us about that program. Yeah, yeah. So Safeness has been growing at the Abusive Partner Program probably for really in earnest since COVID, right? So we run the court mandated program and there's a Child Protective Services mandated program as well.

But we've started to expand that to work with abusive partners, really in a very similar way that we work with survivors. And do you need workforce development help? Do you need housing? What are some of the things that are holding you back from succeeding, right? And of course, woven into that is taking responsibility for your behavior, which is A number one in domestic violence abuser work is, are you going to take responsibility? And then where can we go from there? Because once you take responsibility, we're on a different trajectory. Getting folks to that point is sometimes the hardest part, right?

And then we do the 26-week classes. We kind of see that turn around six, seven weeks where people start to take responsibility. Honestly, my therapists are phenomenal, but that really comes from the guys that have been in the class longer, holding the folks that have been in the class for a shorter period of time accountable. This is the dynamic of abusive partner work that is sorely missed, I think, throughout, like the literature and really just in the space in general. Folks that have been through the program are your best, let's like AA, right? Folks that have been sober for five years are great to talk to people that are newly sober

about how to fight the demons to stay sober, right? It's the same with abusive partners, right? It's like, how do we fight the things that early, you know, you've been through it so you understand that early phase. We also know that our abusive partner, when they can kind of organically, connect, which our therapists allow some time for, those conversations aren't like, I mean, I have heard within the domestic violence movement, like, oh, these guys are swapping hints on how to hit their survivors around the water cooler. I've never seen that. Of course,

they wouldn't do that in front of me. What I see differently is, like, how do you deal with your partner now that you're getting support and she's become violent because you're not engaging how you used to. And so she's feeling ignored, right? We see these really powerful conversations happening. So our goal is to build out much more of that. So the same way we work with survivors, work with abusive partners, have an abusive partner hotline. We should be launching hopefully this summer so that if you're starting to feel violent, like you're, you know, if you're in a new relationship, you're having work stressors. First of all, you understand what your violent triggers are. You're drinking, those kinds of things, you can call this hotline and start getting support and services

maybe from the bar before you go home. So yeah, the idea, you know, the domestic violence movement is interesting because largely the nonprofit side of it is working with survivors. And they're really like, when I talk at conferences and things about this work that we do with abusers, I get a pretty visceral reaction from some of our more entrenched grassroots organizations that are like, that basically like this is against everything that the domestic violence movement was for, the battered women's movement was for. And so I can understand some of that. I also will say domestic violence doesn't end when we help survivors. Whether or not that survivor goes back or whether or not that abusive partner finds someone new, I think we have a responsibility if your mission is to end this

epidemic to work with the root cause and that's the abuser. And you know, my hope will be at some point we have the resources that we can open an abusive partner halfway house. So I don't have to remove the victim and the kiddos from the house or the apartment. They can stay in the surroundings that are comfortable for them with the family, with the school, with their world, not turned upside down. The abusive partner can come into services and we can work differently. And then we can make decisions based on what's right for that family. when everybody is not looking at homelessness,

everybody's not looking at court, being incarcerated, all these things, we can take the temperature down and we can have some real conversations. That, I think, is how real change is made in this movement. Have we gotten there yet? No. We're still trying to build that,

trying to get funding to do this work. You know, largely people see, I think the person, again, who's not in this work every day, sees abusive partner as an important person that should be incarcerated and is not worthy of any resources. Well, if we continue thinking about, you know, abusive partners that way, we're going to continue to have homicides and these high levels of domestic violence.

If we start to think about it differently, resource it differently, study what we're doing, pilot and study, pilot and study. I think within 10 years, we can be in a very different place in Clark County, but it takes some investment and some willingness to do these things differently. I love that. I appreciate that so much. I think that's, That's something that you and I've talked about a bunch. Like we keep we've, the movement has not changed enough from the 90s that we've actually seen progress. And we've been using the same strategies over and over again and it doesn't really feel like anything's gotten any better. Like you said, part of that is funding. But the other part of it is just looking at those root causes. So I,

I always appreciate that that's your point of view on it. Yeah. And you know, it's always interesting because we have really, as this movement grew out of the women's movement, which is really kind of the trajectory, right? We. female focused it. And the issue there is, is, you know, I hate when people say, you know, 1,700 women were raped last year. 1700 men raped women last year. Like, we need to start to really understand the way we talk about this thing is, you know, I can tell you, 898 men in Las Vegas committed arson against their female intimate partner last year. Let's hold the 889 men accountable and stop asking the women to relocate, to leave, to do all these things, to press charges, to leave their jobs, to all these things.

Let's hold these 898 men accountable. That's a very different conversation than the one most of the domestic violence movement is having, which is how do we create more shelters? How do we get more resources? Which, that's going to be a tidal wave of things because we're not dealing with the actual root cause. So that's, yeah, there's a path there. I think whether or not the movement is willing or does a new movement need to be created? Like, how do we get to that space? But getting there will have more answers, I think, than we have now.

So the next question, I guess, is since Clark County, it's not doing the best job, we talked previously about some places that are doing a better job. So you mentioned some of the ways that agencies and advocates do things differently in places like San Diego. So can you talk a little about things that they're doing that Nevada is? isn't that you would like to see us doing here? Yeah. So San Diego has a one safe place network. So we're opening one campus here in Clark County. They have three in San Diego, much bigger county than ours. They had five homicides county wide, one homicide, Dini homicide in the city of San Diego last year. And that population is a million more

than Las Vegas, right? So this is working. So I took a group of folks from law enforcement, from our agency, from other partner agencies to see their program in San Diego. And what we see is this continuum of care, right? So a survivor walks in. They get connected to resources. Law enforcement is part of that. The DA's office is part of that. So the survivor right away realizes if I'm going to walk forward with prosecution, I have got a network of support and help. The second part of that is that connecting the systems of really police agencies like Safeness in the District Attorney's Office to share notes on the cases creates a better pathway, a quicker pathway, and a more efficient system, right?

So if we can take, I think right now we're looking at like six to nine months from time of incident to justice court. Nashville, which is also a place doing this work really well, has taken that, I think, down to 35 days. It's a very different dynamic when we are going from six to nine months to a month, right? But these things don't happen because the court gets more efficient. These things happen when all the systems get intertwined. Everybody's talking the same language, and each of us is in our lane working our strength.

Like in Nashville, every morning, the version of Safeness, the district attorney, and the police all sit at a table together, go over the case plans for that day, and then the next week, right? And all the right resources are allocated to each one of these folks, the survivor, but then also what that communication helps you do is understand who your super abusers are because we have abusers that are abusing more than one person. And unless we're intertwining that information and recognizing that we've got sort of a serial abuser here, those things are happening in a vacuum. Like, I know it.

I know it because our database does that. Who else knows this, right? So that intertwining those multidisciplinary teams on the back end. So it's a twofold win. It's the services, the campus, the place that survivors can get safe, get the resources they need, all of those kinds of things. Create community, right, really amongst that survivor network. And then the multidisciplinary teams that should spring out of those things. Those are the two winning factors in these communities. I'm trying to think a good transition. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. I always want to hear about solutions. That's the one thing that I want to hear about. about. It's one thing for us to go over these terrifying statistics and the horror stories that people live through. If we're not talking about solutions, then where are we going to go? Where are we going to go with this conversation? This work would be hopeful, right, if there wasn't Yeah. I need to feel that. Imagine if today was the day your idea changed someone's life. Imagine if you could help someone pay for college. Help your community build a new playground or

help a child make it to that dream competition. With GoFundMe, it's all possible. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform trusted by over 190 million people. Every week, ordinary people meet their goals and do extraordinary things. Your ideas matter. GoFundMe isn't just for emergencies. Want to raise money for your kids' soccer team or raise funds for a small business, a creative project, or event. GoFundMe helps you turn ideas into reality. And help adds up.

Fundraisers you start for someone else, raise up to five times more. So think right now. Who could use your help? Change rarely comes from waiting. It comes from someone deciding, today I'll start. Don't wait for someone else to bring change. Today, start your fundraiser in just minutes at gofundme.com. That's gofundme.com to start your fundraiser. Gofundme.com. This is a commercial message brought to you by Gofund me. That things can get better. So, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So the first solution is, I think, the first part of everything. In fact, I told somebody this today, I stopped fund. I, I, It really didn't mean for them to stop funding safeness. But we have to start investing in kids, right? The first solution is ending childhood, unmitigated childhood trauma.

And that's not just for domestic violence. That's for sex trafficking, intervenous drug use, alcoholism, obesity. I mean, if you, I can name every sort of social ill. And I can tell you the answers lie in childhood trauma. And it's not just that childhood trauma happened. it's that it's unmitigated childhood trauma, right? So when we look at women that go into sex trafficking that are that are recruited into that industry, that apporrent sort of behavior, most of them were sexually abused by the age of three. Many of them never was that either not believed

or it was never even talked about, right? So childhood trauma is the first solution. And that, you know, that does not need to be like we rework the Clark County Schools District because we know that's not going to happen. But what can that look like? That can look like putting hope education into the schools, which is as simple as quarterly having kids have an age-appropriate story about someone in their community that grew up in rough circumstances but succeeding today. And a little lesson around that. Doesn't have to do anything with sexual violence. Doesn't need to be sexual in nature. Doesn't need to do anything. Just needs to be metaphorically, what we're doing for these kids is saying, that guy had it tough. Now I've heard his story, what he did.

how he elevated. Now when I'm having a dark time, I can pull on that. That's how we build kids hope, which is better than resiliency to help kids succeed. We also need to make sure, like, if I was running Clark County School District, what I'm not. So if Joan Ebert's listening, you know, just a suggestion, every kiddo should have a hope plan. That is a simple one-page document that I start out when I start in preschool or kindergarten. It's like, hey, my hope is that I can be an astronaut or a teacher or whatever, right? What's my hope for my future, right? And every kiddo, that follows them. So if I'm a kid who's moving schools a lot because we see that a lot in our population, the first thing that teacher's saying to me when I walk in is, hey, it's so great to meet you. Tell me about being an astronaut, right? My gosh,

We have right away created just a connection piece that then we're supporting that kiddo on, right? And they can say, you know, it was an astronaut, but now I want to be a, well, tell me about that, right? Just giving these connection points, every kiddo should have a hope plan. Then when we move out of like all of the work that needs to happen in the youth space, because that's where we end this. We can end this thing in a generation and a half if we have invest appropriately in youth. Then we work, we move into that protection place. We've got to educate young people around the dynamics of relationships that should be available to them. That can be both friend relationships, intimate partner relationships, but we have got to do a better job in preparing our young people for predators, preparing our young people for gaslighters, for narcissists, for the world.

In correlation with that, really what we need to start to do for young men. So I think we've all heard the research about how young men are being left behind. And I don't disagree. That's a problem. But here's the thing that we need to stop saying to young men rather than, oh, the world is no longer for you, right? Which I've heard. The world is here for you differently because now how you show up to a relationship with a partner who is also able to make a living wage, able to support themselves, able to protect themselves. How do you show up as a partner and not a protector or not the patriarch? How do you show up differently? And we're not training our young men for that. We're training our young women how to, you know, navigate the world,

how to be leaders, how to do all these great things. We're not training our young men for the changes in dynamic. So that's really important. So that's kind of our younger people and then our teens. And then in our space of protection, you know, Clark County has fewer confidential beds than Washoe County. We're 80% of the state's population. There needs to be real civic donor investment in building out what is appropriate. You know, Safeness is here. We're opening this new campus, but I'm carrying a $5 million loan. We're self-funding the retrofit because our largest family foundation in towns no longer funding capital improvements. Our county has decided to pull $7.8 million in funding.

There needs to be some funding for the protection, the safety net, because the safety net needs to exist or homicides are just going to continue to go up because we haven't been doing the first two things I talked about. right? So that protection framework needs to be built out and needs to be built out in a way that it's adjustable. So we build out shelter beds that in, you know, in five years we're using for abusive partners instead, running a halfway house model. They can have that transferability. And then the final part of that is we need to create empowerment networks for survivors and abusive partners and really folks that are marginalized in a way that makes sense. Clark County, we've got phenomenal like Rick does a great job at Goodwill with the programs. But most of the stuff that we've built out is for unencumbered adults, low-income, unencumbered adults. If I've got kiddos, and I'm a woman even really, this is a lot tougher. So one of the things that Safeness is doing is we'll be opening an large new retail center that we will be hiring people constantly every Wednesday will be onboarding.

Because I recognize in my survivors and my abusive partners the need for immediate income. I don't need a six-week certificate program, I need to feed my kids tonight. So how do we create these entryway programs, not designed to be your forever job, but it's designed to get you out of survival mode immediately. And really understanding that dynamic, I think we have a lot of well-intentioned workforce development programs in town, but I'm talking about instant access. So daily pay, you know, all these kinds of things that we can relieve some stress on our low-income population that's navigating these situations so they can stabilize, get out of survival mode, and then actually start thinking about a future, particularly those folks that have kids.

So those are kind of like the pipeline of solutions that I see that could really make change, but they take some investment. And that, you know, Clark County, it's, I wrote an op-ed the other day. It feels like I'm screaming into the wind. Where are the county, where's county leadership, you know? Shelly Berkeley, mayor of Las Vegas has been a phenomenal partner. Shelly cares deeply. The city has got its own financial sort of struggles right now. But the county has largely been nowhere. And I think, you know, anybody listening that lives in Clark County, that is a question to ask your commissioners, what are you going to do about DV?

You know, where's the domestic violence dashboard at every county meeting? Why aren't we having conversations? You know, if you do a, if you read all of the fatality review reports from Nevada, the state of Nevada, from, they're available from 2014 forward. When you put all those together, it says partnership and working together is the answer. But yet, we sit in a county that's heavily siloed, rather immature in the way that government works with nonprofits, and seemingly unwilling to make any real change for there to be better outcomes for the folks that we serve. County has to stop delivering program. It needs to empower the nonprofits and do what county government is supposed to do in counties our size, which is governance and oversight. They can leave the dealings of everything that needs to happen

for these folks to a very capable nonprofit core. So those are, those are a few of the ways. Yeah. And it's really, it's important. Like you said, it has to be a group effort, a team effort, because as we've been saying, going down one road has not got us to where we need to be. So we, like you always say, we can't punish our way out of this. We can't incarcerate our way out of this. And in some ways, we can't build enough shelter beds because there will always be more if we don't stop the pipeline. Yeah. And I mean, within the nonprofit sector, like, Sean, you know this.

Even within our space, it's like, stop the stupidity. Do we need four hotlines? Do we need four administrative buildings? Do we need four of everything? We do not, right? And so boards of directors that are working in these spaces, where do we start to say, you know, so safeness is about an $8 to $10 million budget. We're more than all the other agencies combined.

And this is not a sort of a safeness plug. But wouldn't we be better if we were an $18 million industry working with one hotline, with one copier lease, with one bill to the county for sewer, right? All these things could be consigned. And it would actually be better for survivors. Then when we talk about having a specialized program, maybe for low-income immigrant moms, right, we could then resource that differently because all of a sudden, that resource that administrative burden is lessened because there's one organization. There is business skills of mergers and acquisitions that would be incredibly helpful in this space. But it takes boards of directors realizing this is not about, it is not about

safeness. It's not about Liz Ortenberger. It's not about anybody. It's about what will be the best working mechanisms for survivors and for this epidemic in our community and then be willing to come to a table, be vulnerable, and hash out maybe a better solution. Because we are, while not redundant in nature, because we can't house and do all the things we want to do for the clients we have.

There is inefficiencies when you have four agencies doing. what one larger agency could do more efficiently. Let's pivot into some questions that we got from our listeners, because I wish I knew exactly how this listener heard about PS417, but I don't think they're local. But they asked me to ask you, what changes have you seen with PS417? And I guess you should say a little bit about that program.

So PS417 is a program we started in 2017, where we go out on calls with police. We go out on calls that include strangulation, assault with a weapon, and repeat calls to the same household. Last year, we were out on scene for 1,500 calls, which relative to the size of numbers I've been talking about is relatively small. Anybody working with a large police department will know people shuffle all the time. So maintaining that relationship with our police department is a constant. I have one person for whom that's their entire job is staying engaged with police going out. to all the area commands and training.

The program is fantastic. Everybody that we've intersected with in that program, at least last year I just looked at this data, there has been no homicides in that population. There's a micro program there, like when Safe Ness is involved, and this matches the Jeannie Geiger Institute, for anyone who understands those folks that do this work as well,

is 96% of women before they are murdered in domestic violence. sorry, I will say it a different way. Only 4% of women who are in the 12 months before they're murdered in domestic violence will reach out to an agency like Safenest for a lot of probably very good reasons. But 86% will have an intersection with police. So that's where we started this program with that data point. Then we started going out. So it makes sense to me, those clients that we're intersecting with in that program

are not being murdered. We do have, you know, the struggle. is we should be, you know, more calls than that. But what happens is Metro says, hey, do you want safeness to come out? Then it's like, you know, you just had all these police in your house. Gosh knows what's happening. You don't need someone else there. We tested that.

And so when we show up, even when we're not requested or they said they'd prefer a follow-up phone call, usually they talk to us typically, right? Because we're like we're there. We're in plain clothes. So it's a great program. It is resource intensive. We have always wanted it to be more volunteer driven than it is, but COVID put a lot. We have not recovered in our volunteer ranks since COVID, but it's a great program.

And I'm happy if anybody wants to reach out through Sean or however, I will chat with anybody about how it started. And I will tell you the number one critical thing, you have to have a relationship with your police chief or your sheriff. Because it has to come from the top down on that side. Yeah, absolutely. So one we got from a listener that I was really interested in. so I'm going to ask it. How did Safe Ness reach the decision to start accepting pets into the shelter? What brought that on?

Yeah, it's an incredibly important part of what we do, but a lot of times what can happen is I get my pet safe, and now we're trying to figure out how to get that pet adopted or fostered because they're not able to take care of the pet. So there's a lot of complexities with a pet program. I think everybody thinks, oh, great, the pets can come along and it's one and done, But really, it's much more complicated than that. We're off of dealing with animals that haven't been appropriately vaccinated that might have injuries themselves that are also traumatized.

And, you know, keeping everybody safe and healthy in a fairly small environment can be tricky. Especially in a communal shelter environment can be really hard. Yeah, my dream would be to build a pet housing so that when you come in with a pet, you're housed with your pet. That just requires a different level of construction in terms of like, you know, pet-proof floors and things like that. But yeah, that would be ideal. Yeah, definitely. And also, it's not just dogs and not just cats. No.

Right. We were just talking about that. The gomono dragon was our first one. Wow. And I'm still waiting for someone to come in with, you know, we're fairly agricultural here, like a chicken. We had a lady pigeon one time. So, yeah, we have all kinds of fun things that happen in that program. Yeah, we were talking about the pigeon.

I mentioned that. I said, I don't think that it was anticipated that someone would come with a pigeon when we said pets. You think dogs and cats, maybe rabbit, maybe a bird. That was interesting. It was like a street pigeon. It wasn't like a domesticated pigeon. Like this poor pigeon had been injured and she had taken it under her wing to help it. Yeah, that was an interesting one.

Under her wing. I see you. One of our local listeners asked about resources for youth. So how does Safeness work with schools to make sure kids affected by domestic violence don't fall behind? Yeah. The best thing you can do is lobby your school to work with us, right? So we work with Title I. The Title I program within the school district is phenomenal.

So we make sure that the kids that are in our care are getting the appropriate schooling. But there are a couple things. We passed legislation in 2019 that any police officer responding to a home with school-age kids is supposed to call safe. voice. It's my understanding that's largely not happening, but yet the idea behind that program is that then the school knows that a kiddo has had a traumatic incident at their home and they can put the resources around that kiddo at the next school day. Yeah. So kids within our care, we work with the schools, but largely I think the system of that could be improved in terms of how kids and maybe parents that are slipping through the cracks can could more easily be identified.

We also, we got several questions that were kind of related to the survivor experience, which is not a surprise to me or to you that people always have questions about that. Someone in Texas asked me, how do you build trust with survivors who may be scared or unsure about seeking help? Yeah. So like I talked about earlier, that relationship really starts on the hotline and it starts with those hotline advocates who are creating that space for you to be heard, for you to get the resources that you need. for you to feel valued and then that transitions. That trust can be hard on the residential campus. I think there is a really easy way for domestic violence programs to flip from being trauma informed to being controlling.

I hear about programs across the country. In fact, I visited one not so long ago where she's like, oh, yeah, we're in these rooms at 8 o'clock telling all these ladies to get up. That sounds like prison to me. And I think if you're operating your domestic violence, shelter in that way, I think you need to check your biases, and I think you need to check your understanding of what's appropriate for survivors and what's appropriate for trauma. And instead of putting your belief system on a survivor community, really maybe create a shelter advisory board

from survivors who have been through your program, ask them how you can improve, get survivor feedback, change that dynamic. But that's a lot of the ways, you know, shelter can be a very, very tough place. Just residential programs within this space in general are really, really hard. We're dealing with people with all different lived experiences, all different levels of trauma, all different levels of healing related to that trauma. Sometimes we're dealing with victims from the same abuser that have kids by the same abuser, that dynamic. We're dealing with people who have been trafficked through a gang. The complexities are real. And we're dealing with people who have different understandings about personal hygiene, different understandings about funliness, have no idea how to live communally with

someone else because that experience is foreign to them. So we're dealing with all of these very human realities. And then we've got, you know, all the violence, the mistrust and the fear on top of that. So a lot of this has to do with you. You got to have the right ratios of staff to clients. You've got to have really forward-thinking case management. And you've got to have advocates who listened. Listening is probably the most important thing. You know, I read a study in doctor's offices. Shints will tell doctors the most pressing issue, three issues in. But doctors hear the first issue. And so your doctors operating on the fact that you've got lower back pain. Meanwhile, two things in, you're telling about the lump in your armpit, right? Here's totally

missing the lump in the armpit, which is probably the bigger deal. The same thing can happen in advocacy. The thing that's coming at me is that you're fighting with your roommate. The thing that I really need to understand is that you're just realizing you were sexually abused as part of your domestic violence portfolio. So that dynamic is really important. I out largely think the national organizations that work to oversee the domestic violence movement need to do a much better job in accrediting facilities, and that includes emotional and physical safety of domestic violence shelters. So survivors can know with like a, you know, with some certainty that these are programs that are going to be there for me in the right way. Because I do think there are bad

actors. I mean, I've heard of programs that if you leave and return to your abuser, you're not welcome back for six months. I don't, I don't understand. As a person working in this space, I don't understand that. Yeah. I don't understand 90-day stays. I don't understand, you know, you're on your last and final. I don't understand. And believe me, some of those things happen at my shelter, too, and I'm on it because I don't like that dynamic. These are human beings that are in survival mode that have experienced something horrible. Be clear about what your guidelines are and be clear that if somebody violates those guidelines, there are consequences to that. You also need to understand where that person's coming from. And whenever I go to our residential campus and I have conversations with survivors, they often want to tell me, you know, hey, there's drug use here. Yeah, I know that, right? There's alcohol use there, even though there's not supposed to be, we do our best to mitigate that. But I also understand the population or working with sometimes leaning on those things to survive. But my question, far and away with survivors, and this can be true for anybody, kind of in a position where you don't work with survivors every day, but you're

very important to their journey, is what's next for you? Like, we can talk all day about the fact that your roommate's kind of messy, that the kitchen isn't as clean as you'd like it, that do you feel safe? That's the number one thing, right? If not, let's talk about that. But what's next for you? Because shelters are never designed to be your long-term plan, right? They're designed to be a stepping stone to get you to somewhere better. And I think far and away in this movement, we don't do a good enough job of realizing did we get people to someplace better. Are they better off after a residential experience in the were before. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of things you can do, but really the, the intention needs to come from the person sitting in the CEO seat for that agency of how you are going to operate and how you are not going to be another abuser. There's a series of articles in 2017 by Jennifer Guthrie, who was a professor here at UNLV, who wrote, and I think it's a three-part series on how navigating shelter can be like navigating another abuser. Read those articles in your agency and understand where and where you are not. Be vulnerable, be transparent, where you are

failing survivors. Because I can tell you, I'm very proud of the agency I run. We oftentimes can fall short of that mandate. Right. So before we go, what are some tips or advice you would offer someone who sees their friend, a loved one, a coworker in a situation that they think fits the definition of domestic violence and they want to help? The situation seems to be escalating. They want to do something to help. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're a friend or family member, the first thing I'm going to tell you not to do is tell that survivor they need to leave the relationship. The reason for that is you're acting in the exact same way as the abuser. I know your intentions are different and you're trying to get that person safe and you love that person, but you're telling them what to do,

which means you're robbing them of the ability to have their own thought process, right? So don't do that part. And that's really hard for dads. dads, I need you to take it down a notch and I need you to not tell your kids what to do when they're adults, right? And I also need you not to threaten. I think I hear a lot of times, well, I told her if she doesn't leave, this door's closed to her. Maybe not the best. Okay. So let's talk about what you should do. Okay. So on the survivor side, if you're seeing someone in a relationship and you're concerned about, get them into a quiet space. Don't do this in front of it. Everybody, don't make a big deal of it. Don't do an intervention. This is not the space in which that will work, but have just a calm conversation of I love you and I care about you. Seems like something is going on. And if you ever need me, just use broccoli twice in a sentence and I'm available for you. Give a code word, but then just leave it at that because I think our intention, particularly I think as women, we're a little bit wired this way, is like, we got to get in there. We got to fix this like today, right? We're going to have a plan. We're not leaving until there's a full four point plan and

PowerPoint and here's how we're going to make this happen. This isn't that. This is, I'm here for you. I love you. How can I help? And I'm worried about you and use this phrase. And then you've left it. And what you've done very powerfully is empower that survivor. Survivors are the best navigators of their experience. And when people start telling them what to do, again, they're just like another abuser. The more important conversation, however, is for men who recognize abusive men in their lives. This may look like the gregarious uncle who comes in and downplays your aunt at a family picnic and, you know, she comes in looking sad. He may be saying mean things about her. This might be your friend at the bar on Friday nights. This might be your work buddy. This can be any context of

conversation. Pulling that person aside, again, privately, don't do these things publicly. If you're in a respected male peer position and saying, look, I love you, I love working with you, I have a lot of respect for you, but I'm not going to tolerate the way you're talking about your girlfriend, wife, partner, whatever, insert, because it's unhealthy and I'm worried about you and do you need help. But what you've done right there is you've not condoned the behavior. Too often what happens for the abusive men, and this could be women too, but the abuse, people say things like, oh, my wife is an effing, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then they're very slanderous about that. And no one ever says anything to them about it.

So then they believe, right, then this must be okay. What doesn't get corrected gets condoned. So respected men of other respected men have these conversations. And the Navy did a phenomenal job with education in this space. I mean, I always like to call out our military because I think the bias is like, oh, military, this big bro network and all these horrible things happen. And yes, there are sexual assaults in the military. There are things that happen.

But far in a way, all branches of the military have done a phenomenal job at trying to unpack and understand these things. And then because of their chains of command and the ways in which they work, really try some things. The Navy did this with a program called MVP, where respected men of enlisted men or whatever the rank system is, would call other men out. Like their job, they were trained. Their job was to call men out on behavior that was inappropriate for the Navy. Those kinds of things work inside and outside of the military network. Anybody that's a coach of young men and young women helping, like you're a very trusted figure in their lives.

For young men, football coaches sometimes are the most trusted adult partnership that they have. If that coach walks by you in the locker room when you're saying something appurant about a woman and says nothing, that has given you a green light to continue that behavior. Everybody's got to stop and take this stuff seriously. Don't turn a blind eye to it. It's too easy. I know. Don't want to get involved. You don't have to get involved. What you need to say is, I don't like the way you're talking. I'm here for you if you need me. And I'm looking forward to, you know, never hearing that again. Done. Done. And I've done it in a way that hasn't shamed you. Yeah. True, which can be challenging. Yeah. Can be very challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's tough. I'm challenged. Especially if someone's, you know, believing they're entitled to this way of talking about their significant other or or. acting in a certain world. It's hard. But really, that conversation is better than what I can do in therapy for an adult men, respected men, holding other men accountable for their behavior.

And you've got to look for that behavior is critical. It's critical. And if they write you out of your life, well, great. But at least you didn't just stand by. There's a phenomenal Australian commercial. You know, Australia has a lot of the same DV patterns that we do. There's a commercial, it's a guy eating dinner, with his wife in an apartment. And you hear all this commotion like next door, like a fight's going on, right? And the guy walks out of the apartment, grabs a baseball bat, knocks on the door of where the abuse is happening and hands the guy the baseball bat. And what the subtitle says is if you do nothing, you're doing something. And that is what people need to remember in domestic violence. If you're doing nothing on the abusive side, you're doing something. You're condoning that behavior. And that is really

important, really important. And again, that's where this starts and ends. It starts and ends on the abuser side. We all want to be there for the survivor side. I will say for folks offering help and support for survivors, for your own safety, you want to understand a couple things. Is there a gun in the home and is that gun locked up? And who has the codes and how is it accessible? Because your chances of being killed as a bystander when just trying to help go up massively when there's a gun in the home. So understanding the dynamic of that gun are going to be critical. If there is a gun in the home and you are feeling unsafe related to that environment, the best thing you can do is get a survivor to an agency like Safenest or to a location where that abuser won't know where they are.

Trust your gut. Trust your gut. You'll never know if you overreacted, but you will certainly know if you underreacted. So before we wrap up, are there any final things that you want to share with our listeners? I know we want to be respectful of your time, ways to contact safeness. We have a list of resources that we share in all our show notes and stuff,

but is there anything in particular you want to share before we let you go back to your life? Safeness is a very, I like to think of us and we're getting better at this every day as a learning institution. So if you've heard anything here today, you want to know more about, you can reach out through these guys,

and I will connect with you. We have a phenomenal education department. If you'd like education in the workplace, If you're an HR professional and you're seeing this, we can help you navigate, how to do some simple documentation that can keep your clients safe, all those kinds of things. But we all can make Clark County a much safer place. If you're from somewhere else in the country and you have a question, feel free. Reach out. You know, this is our world.

We love this work. And there is so much hope in what we can do, I think, collectively. So I just really appreciate you guys having me on and being part of this show. We were so glad you came on. really appreciate your time. And we'll have you back because I know we had so many questions. I know we didn't get to all of them, but we were really glad that you were here and you shared so much with us.

We really do appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you guys. We really hoped you all enjoyed this interview and learned a lot about the state of domestic violence services in Nevada and throughout the country. If there's anyone you would like us to have on to interview, please reach out to us on social media at sins and survivors or email me at shan at sins and survivors.com.

Thank you, as always, for listening, and thank you to our subscribers who contributed questions to the interview. We really appreciate your support. Reminder again to leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening on and share this episode with a friend, because 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 surveillance. 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 researched 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.

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