Nevada's Plague of Domestic Violence

Now, I’ve seen a great many things in my time—buildings blowin’ sky-high, politicians makin’ promises they got no earthly intention of keepin’, and Christmas toys turning sensible folk into violent lunatics—but I don’t reckon I’ve seen anything quite as damning to a so-called civilized place as a regular epidemic of folks killin’ the ones they claimed to love. And yet here we are, in the Silver State, where, according to folks who tally these grim matters, Nevada’s perched right up top among the states where domestic violence turns fatal.

Now there’s an outfit called SafeNest, and if angels ever walked around in work boots, I figure they’re employed there. A woman—name withheld, as she’s got good reason to be cautious—said she’d just about given up entirely, ready to lay down and let the storm take her. Then came SafeNest, and according to her, they didn’t just throw her a rope—they showed her the shore.

“They brought light to the future,” she said, and by thunder, that’s more than most preachers will promise on Sunday.

Their leader, Liz Ortenburger, ain’t sugarcoating the truth. She says Clark County’s become a kind of battleground where women are gettin’ murdered at the hands of men more often than most anywhere else.

Worse yet, folks just tryin’ to lend a hand or who have the poor fortune to fall in love with the wrong fella end up dead too—what she calls “bystander homicides.” Five in 2023, and she already knows of ten this year. That’s not bad luck—that’s a plague.

Now SafeNest wants to open a place they’re calling “One Safe Place,” a kind of fortress of compassion with police, lawyers, doctors, and warm beds all under one roof. Twenty-four hours a day, rain or shine, no questions too dumb, and no hour too late. The kind of place that might’ve saved a hundred lives already if it’d only existed sooner.

But of course, building such a haven don’t come cheap. Seventeen million dollars is the tab. The state ponied up $9 million, and the seller knocked another million off for good measure.

That leaves $7 million still hangin’ over the operation like a summer thundercloud. And don’t get her started on the county—Ortenburger says they offered money and yanked it back like a gambler regrettin’ his bet.

Still, the message from the survivor is clear and worth chiselin’ in stone– “Just be aware and know that there is support out there. You can get out. Don’t be stuck and don’t stay.”

Nevada may be glitterin’ with silver and neon, but if it can’t protect its people–it ain’t worth the shine.