Daniel Flowers, left, leads Shade Tree staff to the womens shelter for a “Purple Thursday” vigil Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020. Purple Thursday is a national day of action during Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Hotline
Call or text the Shade Tree 24 hours a day at 855-385-0072
At a vigil Thursday honoring domestic violence victims and survivors, white roses tied to the Shade Tree shelter’s high-security perimeter fence fluttered with tags bearing the names of local women and men who were killed by family or intimate partners in the last year.
They included: Paula, who was 19; Kinnetha, who was 48; Wesley, who was 58; Judy, who was 75. Other tags were blank, for any and all others.
Before she and her staff silently held glowing votives outside the fence, Shade Tree Chief Executive Linda Perez told her crew that not all girls who dream of being princesses find a prince.
Before getting into nonprofit, domestic violence advocacy, Perez worked in the gaming industry, helping open casinos in the Midwest. She wishes she would have reached out for help sooner herself.
“I love helping people transform their lives. I love being able to give back and be a voice for people that don’t have a voice, and for people who have lost their voice,” she said.
Perez’s efforts over the past two years since starting at Shade Tree have focused on expanding services, which recently came to fruition with the launch of a 24-hour help hotline — 855-385-0072 — and more nonresidential services for people in abusive relationships.
The organization’s most recent report showed that at least 27 of Nevada’s 33 female murder victims in 2018 knew their killers, including 17 who were killed by their husbands, boyfriends or ex-husbands.
This was before the coronavirus forced stay-at-home orders and job losses, which officials say has brought on more reports of assault. Perez said the most recent statistics have been hard to get, but anecdotally, the shelter has fielded more phone calls.
“It’s a perfect time (to expand services) because of the pandemic and the increase in domestic violence,” she said. “It was something we wanted to do and it actually benefits people even more so now.”
The shelter, north of downtown Las Vegas at Main Street and Owens Avenue, cut its capacity from 364 beds to about 95 because of physical distancing restrictions brought on by the pandemic. But relief funds allow the Shade Tree to place more clients in hotels or apartments.
In the two and a half weeks that the hotline has been live, trained staffers and volunteers have fielded about 70 calls, mostly during the overnight hours, said Jordan Berkowitz, the Shade Tree development manager. The hotline also accepts texts. About 15 people have been referred to a safe shelter.
Perez said some callers have been gathering information to get their ducks in a row to leave an abusive relationship. Several callers have been “high lethality” cases, Perez said. That’s a grim label used when a homicide is possible.
Charlyn Hill found the Shade Tree last year, not long after she moved to Las Vegas to live with cousins and get away from the violence of her native Chicago. Local police referred her to the Shade Tree after one of her cousins beat her.
It was a familiar pain for Hill, 62. She described growing up as the youngest of eight children who had been forced to endure physical and sexual abuse from other family members, then her husband, from childhood to middle age.
She married young to a man who beat, choked, gagged, restrained and stomped her for 38 years; she is blind in one eye from the blows. In 2008, she left that relationship.
“I’m supposed to be dead,” Hill said. “I’m supposed to be, because he told me he was going to kill me, and he tried until someone heard me screaming and they kicked the door in.”
After four months in the Shade Tree’s shelter, the organization helped Hill get her own apartment. She continued her work as an in-home caregiver, but soon she’ll be coming back to the Shade Tree as an employee, helping other victims get settled.
Hill said she’s not sure she would have utilized the kinds of resources the Shade Tree now offers when she was with her husband, but she is certain that the Shade Tree is the best thing to happen to her in Las Vegas. She doesn’t plan to leave her newly adopted city. She believes she is here for a reason.
She lives simply. She prefers the mountains to the Strip. The mountains give her peace, she said.
Hill shares her story because she wants other survivors to leave their abusers, too. Reaching out to other women will also be therapeutic for her, she said.
“If I can reach one woman in that shelter, I’ll be OK,” she said.
