School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

GUESS you could say I have dedicated much of my professional life to teaching – woops, make that trying to teach – children and adolesecents how to escape and evade the sick, demented and pernicious sexual predator.  To tell you the truth, however, not that I’m keeping score, I would speculate that any casual observer would rate my efforts as pretty damned pathetic.  Let’s just say, if I paid my rent based on how many children I have saved, I would never set my bags down.

NOT for any lack of trying.  It’s just that it’s rare when I have ever been able to put any decent class size together.  The local community college, for instance, has had to cancel many of my classes because of a lack of interest. And that’s a distinct bummer, Hammer-fans, especially since it wasn’t the children with cases of apathy.  It was their parents.

YOU SEE, I believe the key to teaching children how to escape & evade abductors lies mainly with the parents. Any time I teach children we (the community college and I) require parents to attend along with the children.  Ergo, class dimissed!  So, after years of trying, I not only gave up trying to put S.T.I.C.K. (Survival Techniques and Intervention Concepts for Kid/Parents) and C.A.T. (Counter Abduction Tactics) classes together,  I also gave up writing posts for Keep Schools Safe.

Until an 8-year old boy, who’s parents felt it was safe to allow him to walk by himself in what they thought was an ultra-safe neighbohood, was abducted by a “safe-looking” adult, a resident of that neighborhood, and was sexually molested before he was cut up in little pieces and stuffed in a freezer.  Until several other little girls and boys suffered the same fate.  Their names need be cited here.  Just the fact that reading these tortuous and predictable stories prodded me into coming back and giving this another shot.

I begin my reentry into the blog world with this post.  And, with this post, I once again ask parents to seriously, realistically and arduously take up the role of Safety Coach for their child or children.  In this and a few other posts I plan to go into what, if you accept this challenge, a Safety Coach would do in order to save your child(ren) from the sexual predator.

THE SAFETY COACH – Roles and Responsibilities

• Support & Encourage Your Child.
• Ask Questions & (Really) Listen.
• Establish a Culture of Awareness, Assessment & Anticipation.
• Teach Your Child How To Take Action in his/her defense.
• Skills Like Running Tactically/Breathing Tactically/”Crab-Walking Backwards”/Using “Barricades in the Environment”/Transitioning Into The”Drop-Lock & Roll”/Escaping From The Car, etc.
• Develop, Enhance & Maintain the Value System of Returning Home to family.
• Teach Your Child Effective (Kid Escape) Skills To Expand the Predator’s Time at the “Initial Crime Scene (ICS).”

STARTING with my next post, I will expand and get specific about how you, as a parent, treacher, or administrator can develop a system of “Escape Values” that will maximize your child’s chances of never being selected as a victim, or, if he or she is, how to escape and evade the potential abductor.

 

UNTIL THEN, stay safe.

Hammer

 

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