Does She Feel Safer? A Conversation with SafeNest's Liz Ortenburger

Vanished Voices, The Overlooked · Aug 6, 2026 · 1h 7m

For decades, the domestic violence movement has operated on a familiar script: abuser is bad, survivor should leave, and the system's job is to punish after the fact. Liz Ortenburger, CEO of SafeNest — Nevada's largest domestic and sexual violence nonprofit, serving Clark County since 1977 — has spent the last ten years challenging that script from the inside.

In this conversation, Liz walks us through the real, layered reasons abuse gets passed down through generations, and why SafeNest made the controversial decision to work directly with abusers alongside survivors. We talk about the DALE…