BOULDER CITY, Nev. (FOX5) – School starts Monday for most Clark County School District students.

But one very special school is having a delayed start. However, the teachers arrive tomorrow at The Healing Center at St. Jude’s Ranch for Children in Boulder City.

The first-of-its-kind school in the country caters to children who are victims of sex trafficking.

The goal at The Healing Center is to help these young minds transition from victim to survivor.

That’s important for the C.E.O. of St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, Christina Vela. “The truth is, for the young people that will come and call this their home, they’ve experienced this tremendous amount of trauma in their life,” Vela said.”

Students will have access to a quality education while they begin their process of healing.

That comes in the form of licensed teachers, counselors and support professionals.

Principal Amy Manning wants to make sure her teachers are meeting their students from a place of compassion. “What we’re focusing on is trauma-informed instruction,” Manning said. “What does sex trafficking look like, so they have that background. How do we build relationships and rapports with students because that’s going to be our number one key focus to helping us be successful.”

Manning says it’s all about building trust, and she knows it won’t come easy given what these children and teens have been through.

The healing center will be the first-of-its-kind residential therapeutic center in the country, housing around 60 kids in a nurturing, holistic environment with individual one-story homes in a neighborhood setting.

Both Manning and Vela say the unprecedented school has been needed in the community for a long time, and the prevalence of victims who have been sex trafficked in our area is surprising to a lot of people.

“I think ignorance is bliss, and what you don’t know, you don’t know until you start to learn, and then it’s quite shocking the facts that you learn and see how prevalent it is in our community and across the United States and the nation,” Manning said.

Close to 29,000 children were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023.

The center says one in six were likely victims of sex trafficking.

Vela wants the victims to know their future doesn’t have to be determined by their past.

“We want hope to start rising in their lives that what’s happened to them doesn’t define them and that they can start to feel safe enough to dream about a life free from exploitation and abuse.”

The healing center will be the only residential treatment center with these specific housing options in Southern Nevada.

The Healing Center will have its grand opening on October 29th, and start welcoming students shortly after that. Teachers start at the center Wednesday, August 7th.

Copyright 2024 KVVU. All rights reserved.

VIRGINIA CITY, Nev. (KOLO) – The people seen on camera in a viral TikTok from Hot August Nights in Virginia City have had their registration revoked permanently.

Organizers from Hot August Nights told KOLO 8 News Now the news Tuesday morning.

The incident got the attention of local police, prompting the Storey County Sheriff’s Office to initiate an investigation into the incident.

That investigation is now being handed over to the Storey County DA’s office.

Copyright 2024 KOLO. All rights reserved.

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A rural Nevada sheriff is investigating a potential hate crime after a Black man who was collecting signatures for a ballot measure recorded a confrontation with another man he said directed a racial slur at him and said “they have a hanging tree” for people like him.

“I’m still shaking every time I think about it,” Ricky Johnson told The Associated Press by phone Monday as he boarded a plane in northern Nevada back to his home in Houston, Texas.

Johnson posted part of the video of the Aug. 2 incident in Virginia City, Nevada, on social media, and the comments drew swift condemnation from local and state officials. Sponsors of the 10-day Hot August Nights class car event that was being held at the time said it revoked the registrations of those identified in the video confronting Johnson.

Storey County Undersheriff Eric Kern said Monday the office has completed interviews with Johnson and potential suspects and delivered the case to the district attorney for a decision on any charges.

“As far as a hate crime, it could be an element,” Kern told AP. “There is an enhancement we are looking at.”

Johnson, who can’t be seen on the video he posted to TikTok, said a white man called him a racial epithet and referenced the “hanging tree” before he started recording the encounter. In the recording, Johnson asks the man to repeat what he said.

A loud, profanity-filled argument on both sides followed before a woman told Johnson he was on her property and he repeatedly asks her not to touch him as they move the conversation into the street, the video shows.

Kern said Johnson provided the video to investigators. He said no one, whether suspect or victim, has been uncooperative in the investigation.

In a statement over the weekend, the sheriff’s office said it doesn’t condone racism, inequality or hate speech and wants to ensure the public it’s doing a thorough investigation.

“But I want to say that in general, in Virginia City, this is not something that happens here,” Kern said. “It’s really a sad thing but it’s an isolated incident. It’s has caused a lot of negative impacts on all sides because people are getting a negative opinion. People are calling businesses.”

Storey County District Attorney Anne Langer didn’t respond to an email request for comment Monday. A spokeswoman for her office referred calls to County Manager Austin Osborne. Osborne’s office said he wasn’t available.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black, offered his support Monday to the Storey County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation of what he said was a “hateful, racist incident” in one of Nevada’s most storied towns.

Virginia City attracts tens of thousands of tourists who walk its wood-planked sidewalks filled with old saloons and stores in the Virginia Range just east of the Sierra, about 30 minutes outside of Reno.

It was Nevada’s largest city in the mid-1800s when the discovery of the Comstock Lode brought thousands of silver miners there. Samuel Clemens got his start in the newspaper business and adopted his pen name, Mark Twain, there at the Territorial Enterprise.

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo posted on social media saying he was concerned and disappointed by the incident.

“Racism and hate have no place in Nevada — this behavior must be condemned in the strongest terms possible,” he wrote on X.

The Virginia City Tourism Commission denounced the “hateful and racist” behavior as “abhorrent and inexcusable.”

Johnson was working for Advanced Micro Targeting Inc., a Texas-based company that provides voter outreach and get-out-the-vote services, to collect signatures for a proposed Nevada state ballot initiative aimed at capping fees that attorneys collect from clients in personal injury cases.

Johnson said he’s been the target of racial slurs before but the Virginia City incident was different.

“To be actually in the middle of that and you have no way out. you feel like you’re being surrounded by all these people. I felt closed in,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Ken Ritter contributed to this report from Las Vegas.