Breaking the Silence: Addressing Domestic Violence with Safe Nest
Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Zandra Polard 0:53
Good morning Las Vegas. It's Zondra polearm. It's where I am. Thank you for tuning in this morning. It's a fabulous hot morning here in Las Vegas. And I want to give a special shout out to coast to coast roasters in Arcadia, California. Thank you for your support with the show. We truly appreciate it. Today, we're talking about domestic violence. And we have a representative here from safe nest, which has been in Nevada since 1977. They are the largest domestic abuse treatment center in the Las Vegas area. So we have Angela, here to talk to us about domestic violence. Welcome.
Unknown Speaker 1:48
Hi, how are you?
Zandra Polard 1:50
I am well. And I thank you so much for coming on to the show. You know, I've been wanting to talk about domestic violence for a while. And I have not been able to get in touch with your very busy CEO. List. aardenburg are right. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 2:10
yeah, she is a busy one Pro. Yeah.
Zandra Polard 2:13
You know, I met her. In 2017. I had a fundraiser for domestic violence here at the town square. And there was a movie, they came out with a friend of mine about domestic violence. And so, you know, I decided to have a fundraiser. So that's how we met.
Unknown Speaker 2:34
That is amazing. So much for doing that. That's awesome. I appreciate that.
Zandra Polard 2:39
Absolutely. So when is Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
Unknown Speaker 2:47
It is in October. Okay, Mexican Violence Awareness Month is in October. So that is definitely it'll be here before we know it, unfortunately. Right. I'm hoping we can get past the heat of July and August. And then definitely get ready to get out there. And, you know, really rally around Domestic Violence Awareness and being able to have the tough conversations. Right. So yeah, so it will be in October.
Zandra Polard 3:20
Okay. So tell us do does domestic violence increase during the hotter months? I would think so.
Unknown Speaker 3:34
You know, I don't know if there's anything correlated like specifically study on that. However, however, I will say, if you and I are agitated in the heat, I don't think that helps anybody write anybody's mood, or anybody who is already angry or agitated? I think it kind of just enhances it. I will absolutely say that it enhances it. I don't know if there's ever been any, like I said study or work that kind of proves that. But I will be willing to bet you that getting in a hot car, maybe even a car that has no air conditioning. Right. Right. And again, so that would definitely make me upset. So I'm going to assume that it absolutely enhances and causes a lot more anger and frustration. Unfortunately, violence. Yes.
Zandra Polard 4:24
And along with you know, in Las Vegas, the drinking and gambling, I think would be, you know, correlators to domestic violence, right?
Unknown Speaker 4:34
Absolutely. There's so many intersections with domestic violence, right? We talk about sexual assault, we talk about human trafficking, alcohol abuse, any kind of substance abuse, any kind of gambling issues, right, any kind of addictions, all of those things intersect homelessness, right? Mental health issues, so on and so forth. There are numerous intersections, you
Zandra Polard 4:58
know, and I love that you guys If I'm sorry to cut you off, I love that you guys have no counseling on site. So let's get into a situation with for someone who may need domestic violence assistance. You have counseling, you have emergency shelter, right? What are some of the and then you also deal with you mentioned the human trafficking? Is there an age? As far as getting any treatment? Do you have to be of a certain age? Or do you deal with you here?
Unknown Speaker 5:35
Yes, we do we do work with youth? Absolutely. We definitely have an opportunity to engage with our youth. So I think a general idea that people get from domestic violence organizations is that they're only a shelter, right? So those that come to safe nest, are only available to receive services, they they're in our shelter, that is absolutely false. Okay, shelter is definitely a huge component of our organization. However, it is not the only avenue in which to receive service. So we have, like you said, counseling department, or anybody can contact our front desk, and absolutely schedule to have a counseling therapy session, attend groups. Whether that be someone who is interested in trying to find out is my family at risk, right for domestic violence, maybe I can just get some education, maybe I just need like a domestic violence one on one, right? Like, maybe I just need to gain some information about what that looks like. Or maybe I'm a community member. And I need my staff, and the people that work with me to know what this is and what this looks like. So that we're able to provide service, and then refer for services. So we have numerous partner agencies that do that. But along with that, we absolutely have emergency protection orders that we actually can do in house, in our physical building or admin building. We also have, again, a youth component, where we we literally just got back from taking 120 kids to Camus, Utah camping for an entire week. We just got back on Monday. So my team and I are still exhausted from that trip. But every single one of the kids that we've taken between the ages of seven and 17 have been impacted, or were the actual victim of some sort of domestic violence, or sexual assault. Does
Zandra Polard 7:50
this include verbal abuse? Would that be considered?
Unknown Speaker 7:55
Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. There are so many types of abuse. I think, again, like like I said, Before, when people think of domestic violence, they automatically think, hurt black guy, you know, maybe a broken arm or a broken limb, something to that nature. But no, there are numerous types of abuse. And just like you identified verbal abuse, right, verbal abuse, manipulation, maybe financial abuse, maybe you work, and you don't have access to your own bank account, because somebody else's is monitoring that you're not allowed to spend anything, maybe you don't have a debit card, you don't have access to any of the credit cards or any of any of the anything, right, that may be a value. We talked about, obviously, sexual abuse we talked about. Another one that you hear a lot of right, is reproductive coercion, right? Where either I'm forcing you maybe to have a child with me, or maybe I'm sabotaging us from having a child. Okay, yeah, you can't you can't take the birth control or I don't use birth control or right, maybe I want you to have the baby, I don't want you to have the baby. So the list goes on and on. Right? You hear a lot about people being gaslit right back and go to like some type of verbal abuse, like, Oh, my God, everybody's gonna think you're crazy. If you're saying this, your family is not going to believe you know, the sin and believe you right, so a lot of manipulation. And a lot of those things, unfortunately, are red flags. Do you believe in flags?
Zandra Polard 9:39
Do you find that a lot of times, victims are isolated from their families so that that manipulation can happen?
Unknown Speaker 9:49
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. For sure. If you have people that love you and support you, right, the first thing they're gonna identify is, why would you allow someone to treat you that way like you deserve more than that, I love you, we care about you, let us help you let us do this, let us do that. But if I have you isolated, you have no access. Or maybe I create the drama, right? Maybe I create an argument or something, maybe I create the madness so that nobody's paying attention to what's going on over here. Maybe if I move you out of state, maybe if I move you away, maybe if I, you know, tell all your friends that you don't like them or you know, what have you, whatever that may be, or whatever that may look like. Isolation is absolutely definitely a red flag. Wow.
Zandra Polard 10:41
Okay, well, I learned something about the the manipulation with the children. I know no one I have for no way I'm having another one. So I was just thinking to myself, like, Wow, if I had another kid, no way. But anyway, I digress. Back to the domestic violence. Oh, can you have any emergency hotline? If you please provide that one? Yeah. 24 hours, seven days a week?
Unknown Speaker 11:18
Yes, that that number is? Yes. 702-646-4981. Not only can you call the hotline, but you can also chat, like do a text okay with that hotline number? And you will absolutely have someone in our office responding anytime, anytime of the day.
Zandra Polard 11:41
And do you find that people will just come to the site Searching for help comm like coming to the actual location? Does that? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 11:49
So we have Yeah, so we have an admin building. Obviously, our shelter is an undisclosed location. So we don't give that information out. But we do find people that happen to just kind of come in. So our parking lot, we share a parking lot with the meadows Mall. So if you're familiar with the meadows mall, we literally are in within the same parking lot. So we've actually had people run in to our front doors, seeking help, just because there was an incident that possibly happened at the mall. And they came over and they were like, this was the only chance I got to run away here. And not even maybe not even knowing who we were, but just needing help. Right, just needing help. I've lived in Las Vegas for 10 years. And so I'm super familiar with the organizations and services that we offer. But I have met people who are born and raised here in Las Vegas that have no idea who safeness is only because they've never had to utilize that service. Or give the information right. So yeah, please. We are definitely available at the hotline. We are definitely open five days a week at our admin office. But we are constantly available via the hotline and
Zandra Polard 13:11
not in usually domestic violence we relate with to women, but also you know, the transgender community, the LGBTQ plus community, right you have
Unknown Speaker 13:24
absolutely domestic violence does not care about any of those things, right? They don't care how old you are, what color you are, what sexual orientation, gender identity, none of that matters. It doesn't matter. So if you are in need of services for domestic violence, or sexual assault, you are absolutely eligible to receive service that safe missed. No,
Zandra Polard 13:46
I know you also with your education program, you help women or you help people with work, right. Like to do get some work. I read something about coffee.
Unknown Speaker 14:03
I'm so glad you brought that up. So we absolutely have a phenomenal it's our Entrepreneurship Program, right. So what we do is we sell coffee, but the clients that are utilizing shelter, are able to gain workforce training, right. They learn how to make calls, they learn how to do databases for ordering coffee, they learn how to fulfill orders, they print labels, they ship boxes, they are learning all of these skills to be able to do major you know delivery of coffee, I mean even think about Amazon right? The all the packages that come through and everything that happens, their training mechanism is exactly the same right? You have to be able to to read the screen and print these labels and know where to go and shipping and on and on and on. So they're able to learn all of those skills and make money based on how many orders we're getting for coffee, right? So the more coffee that's ordered on our website or on our, you know, wherever you can blink, we have QR codes around town as well. And you purchase coffee, what that does is that allows us to continue to train clients that are shelter, so that they can absolutely be making their own money, right. And they're able to become self sufficient. Because
Zandra Polard 15:29
a lot of times when a lot of times, while I'm speaking as a woman, we are trapped, or feel trapped, because, you know, we can't earn our own money, and so we feel stuck. And then we stay in the relationship.
Unknown Speaker 15:45
Absolutely, you're absolutely right. That's exactly what I was going to say, is that's exactly what happens. Women and men sometimes too, right? If they are not the primary breadwinner of the home, right? What ends up happening is that now they feel like if I leave, I'm not only leaving the the abuse and the ugliness of this relationship, but I'm also leaving my livelihood, right? I cannot pay these bills, I cannot care for these children. I cannot feed my dog, or I cannot take care of the things. My mom, maybe I'm caring for my sick mother, right? Make sure this is our only means of being able to have what we need. Exactly. So this is why creating workforce training, creating opportunities to be able to give and provide training. We also work with partner agencies I have, I'm gonna give a shout out to my very, very good friend Debbie Isaacs, who has a company called unshakable. We partner with the unshakable group and they come in, and they literally prepare women to go out into the workforce, right? They teach them what an appropriate email looks like, right? So those of us that I'm not going to say my age, but if you still have a Yahoo email account, right, you may be not as young as a lot of people. So your Yahoo account may be 25 years old, right? So who knows what you called it back then. But let's teach you some appropriate email addresses. Right. Let's try something else. Let's try. So how do we dress appropriately for an interview? How do we answer questions in an interview? Prepping? Those kinds of things empowering? Let's see, do you need new clothing? Do you need? Do you need a new bag? Maybe this job requires, you know, a hard hat or maybe this requires, you know, all black, you know, a lot of our culinary programs or a lot of our beauty industry, right? You have to wear all black. So what do we need? How do we get this stuff? So yeah, it is definitely a huge opportunity. And something new, right? We're so used to as an organization that helps with domestic violence violence survivors, is that we are constantly going, Okay, I got to just keep them safe. My priority is to keep them safe. But how long? How long until you go, Okay, are you ready? Now to look forward into the next step? Right?
Zandra Polard 18:25
Because you can keep them safe, and then give them safe. And then it's like, well, maybe I should go back because now I still can't take care of myself. So
Unknown Speaker 18:34
Right. Right. So we have to be thinking with all of these other areas. Right? Okay. Let's see, I got you face. Here we are. Your the kids are enrolled in school or what have you, whatever they need at that moment, your pet is in our pet program. But now, when was the last time you were employed? Are you interested in going back to work? Can you see yourself in the workforce? What do you like to do? Right, like relearning to figure out who you are, is empowering. To watch that in front of you, is an unbelievable feeling to watch somebody grow right in front of your eyes, and they see themselves and they're like, I can do this. I'm gonna give you an example. We had a young woman in our shelter, okay. And she was a registered nurse. Something happened or she was in this really toxic relationship. There was obviously domestic violence involved. She ended up coming to the shelter. She lost her license, her nursing license, and she was like, I'm done. I'm done. Like I work so hard to get this. And through all this, you know, tumultuous relationship that I've been in. I have lost this and there's no way I can get
Zandra Polard 19:54
it back and then feeling hopeless.
Unknown Speaker 19:57
Right? Absolutely. So not only did If I love this person who I was with, right, this person hurt me, that doesn't mean I don't love them. That means I still love them. But now I'm even hurt even more. And now I've lost my livelihood, my my license, I have nothing, what do I have to look forward to nothing. And working out all the details and figuring all these things out. She was able to get her license partially reinstated. So it wasn't the full licensure that she had previously. But she was able to get back into the medical field, and is working back in the medical field, making 20 something dollars an hour. From she thought it was done, she thought she would never be back in the medical healthcare profession ever again. And
Zandra Polard 20:47
that's when I say You go girl, oh, rightfully,
Unknown Speaker 20:52
we break the wins. Right, right, celebrate all of those wins. We have people that come into the shelter, that have had their IDs taken, their social security cards destroyed. They don't even have access to their birth certificates, their children's birth certificates. That is like who you are as a human right. Like, I remember, I don't know about you, but I remember being 18 going away to college. My mom handed me this manila envelope. And it was like, there's your stuff. You are as a human. Right, right. You don't have these things. You do not exist in this world. Right? So we celebrate getting that license or that ID we celebrate getting that social security card, we celebrate getting those copies of birth certificates all over again. Like, that's party time, right there. That's like, high five. You go girl, all the things that you just said, right, because it's it's about celebrating the wins, providing hope.
Zandra Polard 21:53
Now, you mentioned the items that you are able to supply. So you have a donation center. Yeah, what is the number which is not the hotline? I'm sure. This is a different number for donations. What would that number be to donate? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 22:10
let's see, right. So we can call our front desk and we can get all of the donation setup. But we also not only do we take donations of like items, clothing, obviously diapers, all the main things. But we also have a donation site. If you wanted to donate any money. You we absolutely have that on our website as well. Our actual organization, you can schedule the pickup of your goods at this number 702-257-3800. Wait
Zandra Polard 22:46
a minute, so you guys will come and pick it up to
Unknown Speaker 22:50
Oh, yes, we'll come pick it up. Oh, that's nice. Absolutely. Come pick it up.
Zandra Polard 22:54
Yes. Wonderful. What's that?
Unknown Speaker 22:56
You're good. Let's see, I just of course, I just moved it from where I was sorry. I
Zandra Polard 23:02
mean that you know, because you don't know what things to the side. And it's like, Oh, I'm gonna donate this. And then, you know, it sits there too long. Just like, throw this stuff in the trash. I don't feel like, you know, driving across.
Unknown Speaker 23:14
Donate. Yeah, exactly. Here's the number for donations that are again, 702257 3800. This is specific for the donation center, you can schedule a pickup, and we'll come out in and take out your hands for you.
Zandra Polard 23:31
Beautiful, beautiful. And these are gently used.
Unknown Speaker 23:35
One more thing? Yeah, of course. I'm gonna add one more thing. So because we have children that are also residing in the shelter with mom or dad or whomever people love to give baby items, right? diapers, Formula wipes, but I need people to remember that we also serve teenagers, right? Teenagers are still with their parents. And I don't know about you, and you said you had four kids, my son is six to a size 14 shoe ever needed assistance. I got a big kid that needs to close to and that needs shoes to and that needs, you know, the same kind of things, but just on a much larger scale. So I want people to know, too, that I would we would absolutely adore to receive teenage children items, boy or girl. We also you know, not everybody has a five zero including myself. So plus items are always welcome. Unnecessary. Very good. Yeah. Yeah.
Zandra Polard 24:40
Very good points. Very good points. Because you know, you're correct when we think, you know, we got to help the kids. We're really thinking babies. And as you said, some of those kids are six to some of those kids got BMV you know, so whatever you're wearing ugly, they can probably fit it to you
Unknown Speaker 24:59
Absolutely, absolutely.
Zandra Polard 25:03
So before I let you go, I want you to give that domestic violence, crisis phone number again. And I also would like you to give? Well, I'll tell you the safeness.org website where you can find all of this information as well. So I would like you to give the domestic violence, hotline number, and any other pertinent information for our listeners.
Unknown Speaker 25:35
Absolutely. So are 24/7 hotline, that number is 702-646-4981. You can text or call. I just want to say thank you so much for allowing us to have these tough conversations. I think that for a very long time, people have decided that we were not going to talk about it. Right, that we were not allowed to have conversations outside of this home. Right? How many times have you heard that? What that what happens in here? Nobody, right. Yeah, exactly. So I think with the power of social media, the power of, you know, any kind of media, we're having the conversations now, we're absolutely exposing the ugliness and, and the just the lethal, least ality of domestic violence and sexual assault, we need to continue to have these conversations, it is happening. It is there, it is no longer a secret. We want to provide service, we understand that domestic violence is not an easy thing to talk about, or to even, you know, identify as something that's happening to you. But our goal is just to provide service. One of the other components that I think that we forget, is to end the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault, which is our mission, we have to do education prevention, right with our little people, with our little humans, we need to have conversations when it's talking about trusting your instincts, you know, taking care of your body, all of these things. But we also have to figure out why people abuse, right, why do we hurt people? What is happening, we have a program that concentrates on those who use violence. We have classes for that, too. We're not asking anybody to break up a marriage or break up a home, if this is what you want to do. Let us help you figure out how to stop utilizing abuse as an option. Right? Let's give you some skills. Let's take some other components and pieces and figure out what's happening. Why do we respond this way? And then I'll clear on the other end is how do we teach our babies not to do the same thing?
Zandra Polard 28:04
Absolutely. Now, one more thing I just thought of, on your website, I did not see the course availability. How was that posted? Where is it posted?
Unknown Speaker 28:16
So we have on our education and prevention side, so you would probably have to go to service actually is their services and then there's prevention outreach. Okay. So if you're looking for collaborations, youth programs, adult trainings that's there. But in terms of services, if you want to sign up for like a domestic violence group, that would be where you'd want to go where services and probably under the counseling or advocacy area, then you can sign up for those there. We also do volunteer so anybody that's interested in volunteering for safeness, we absolutely have another link there as well for volunteerism. Okay,
Zandra Polard 28:58
yeah. So that link? Okay. Well, I want to thank you again, you are always welcome. Please keep my information get in contact with me. If I can be of any service. I'm there.
Unknown Speaker 29:10
So absolutely. If there's anything that you need, please feel free to reach out to me email. However, you seem fair, I might have text me as well. So thank you again for the opportunity. We truly appreciate it.
Zandra Polard 29:24
You're welcome. Well, 91.5 is Zondra polearm. This is It's where I am. I'm here every Saturday at 7:30am. Please tune in. And if you've missed any portion of this broadcast, you can find it on Spotify, Apple, Google and Amazon podcast platforms. Thank you, and I'll be here next week. Bye.
Unknown Speaker 29:53
All right
Transcribed by https://otter.ai