Large Fierce Mammal

On Tuesday, 2 July 2013, a 16 year old girl was reportedly sexually assaulted in Langley, British Columbia. According to an article posted to the CKNW website:

… mid day on June 22nd, a 16 year old girl was waiting for a bus at 42nd Avenue and 204th Street.

A man pulled up next to her and ordered her in.

She was terrified, and did what she was told.

Once she got inside, he pulled out a large knife, drove to a church parking lot in the 212 hundred block of 56th Avenue, and sexually assaulted her.

He then took her to the bus loop at Logan and Glover road and let her out ….

Many will read the description of this terrible event and focus on the obvious – a young woman targeted and victimized by a sexual deviant. A large knife. A sexual assault in, of all places, a church parking lot. I never take a single news item and accept it as anything close to a full disclosure of fact, but if this played out as described, then there is an element to the sequence of events that I regard to be extremely disquieting for reasons that transcend concern for the traumatic lifelong effects such an incident will have on the victim, and relief that her assailant released her rather than disposing of the presumably only witness to his crime. My problem lies in her compliance under threat even before a weapon became visible and while her assailant was sitting behind the wheel of his car in broad daylight. If this is indeed what happened, it highlights something all parents must study and teach their children about, for the fault lies not with the actions of the poor young woman in question. Those are an outcome of something far more problematic – her reasons for passive compliance.

Before going further, let me emphasize three things:

1. My intention here is to highlight how such tragic and traumatic events can be prevented through training, education, and mindset. I am in no way making light of the lifelong trauma this incident will have on the victim, nor am I blaming her in any way for what happened.
2. Every situation will play out differently, but there are nearly always common threads in each case that highlight simple and effective actions which could have prevented or limited the effects of an attack. Female or male, old or young, learn from them.
3. This is not about teaching your children how to fight or injure another person. This is about survival and refusal to submit to the whims of another. Learning to fight, and using what one has learned in that regard, is a personal choice, not something anyone else can force on you. This is about avoiding the fight in the first place, and trusting to those innate Survival instincts imbued into every living thing by Nature. They are there in all of us, although they are somewhat dimmed in many by fear of imagined immediate consequences, fear of getting into trouble, fear of hurting someone, fear of being rude, fear of being wrong. Always fear, but never fear of the thing that really is fearsome, and through that window of doubt, evil grins.

In the wake of this incident being brought to my attention, I briefly participated in a discussion about it involving several people, one of whom was a woman who reportedly has direct knowledge of the locale, the victim, and the incident. I found her sincerely expressed comments enlightening, and will quote them in what follows without any intent to criticize, disrespect, or disparage her in any way.

I had said this:

I’m still stuck on the fact that she got into his car under her own steam. In all the courses I have taught over the years I have emphasized one thing – NEVER go quietly and willingly into captivity! The perp wants to take you to a secondary crime scene. Where you’re being taken from is undesirable – too risky – so KEEP it risky. This will decide the outcome while his plan is easier for him to abandon than to escalate.

In response to my words, the aforesaid lady replied:

Yes, she got in to the car on her own but she was forced. The area is a rural one, not heavily populated, one that I grew up in so I confirm that it has the “this doesn’t happen here” mentality.This article casts but a glimpse of the incident. He would have caught her if she ran, would have succeeded in getting her in to the vehicle.

I guess I am more so saying that the idea of never go quietly and willingly in to captivity is a great one, but when confronted with the situation it may very well be different. I can see that you train what I am assuming is some sort of self defense against predators like that, and can probably also attest to the fact that people don’t prepare their children enough anymore in the least. I was raised street smart – I work with teenagers, and they are driven everywhere. If they got lost they wouldn’t know what to do.

And so, my words:

Believe me, I never take a single news item and accept it as anything close to a full disclosure of fact. I do, however, stand by my position that to move toward the threat rather than away from it is unnatural. That being the case, it’s something we can train into anyone because it’s in keeping with Nature. Starting the encounter with acceptance of your own inevitability as a victim is to grant ALL control of the outcome to the enemy LONG before you ever meet him because it is built on the belief that nothing you could ever do will counter his actions. That the moment he woke up in the morning with a plan to abduct and have his way with you, he was on the sure road to success and there is nothing you can, or ever could, do about it. That salvation lies solely in the timely arrival of a rescuing third party.

Even in a case where a firearm is pointed at the intended victim, immediate flight out of the line of aim will often result in abandonment of the plan because for most thugs there is no plan B that relates to what to do if your all powerful penis extension isn’t given the respect you think it deserves. There is also the fact that even those who train relentlessly in the art of engaging moving targets with a firearm will tell you that it’s a VERY hard thing to do well. Also, firing a gun makes noise. Stabbing or cutting someone does too because it turns a potentially silent, cooperative, and terrified victim into a screaming, thrashing cat in a bag. Either runs the risk of drawing attention, no matter how rural the community, and also can cause injury to the attacker. They aren’t in this because they want to work for it. Running a foot race with a screaming woman is on the list of too hard. They want a quiet trip to somewhere else, where nobody will be close enough to hear any of the screaming when it starts in earnest.

These are a few illustrative examples of what I teach. None of it is intended to attack any prior commentator, but rather to educate. And I certainly hear your comment about teenagers being driven everywhere. I have a son of my own coming next month and he will not be among such. By the time he’s a teenager he’ll have all the skills necessary to know exactly where he is at all times, even if he occasionally forgets to convey that information to his Mother and me.

In the end, even the best prepared can fail. As the saying goes, some days you get the Bear, some days the Bear gets you. That doesn’t mean you should eschew the skills that give you a chance of turning yourself instantly from the thing your enemy wants most to have, into the thing he wants most to be rid of.

I absolutely refuse to accept the all too commonly held belief that any efforts at avoidance, flight, or resistance are doomed to be futile. It has to end. If it doesn’t, those parents who adopt it and pass it along to their progeny aren’t raising children. They’re raising fodder.