St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, a community of hope and healing, received a $3 million grant from Clark County to help build a Healing Center with safe homes for child victims of sex trafficking.
This comes on the tail of the release of an eight-year study highlighting this serious public, social and mental health concern for the most vulnerable children in Las Vegas.
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children’s Healing Center will help a growing victim population that has been enslaved and has nowhere else to turn. For more than a half century, the charity has been providing services to abused, neglected and homeless children and youth.
This residential program is a natural extension of its programs and will provide a nurturing and therapeutic environment, survivor advocates and other critical services to child victims of sex trafficking. It will be the only residential treatment center, with these specific treatment housing options, in Southern Nevada and one of the few in the entire country.
A Las Vegas-based eight-year exploratory study on child sex trafficking conducted by Arizona State University’s Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research with the support of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the National Criminal Justice Training Center, found that of the 833 child victim cases, only 259 were filed.
