THE PROBLEM

Teen-age girls, ages 12 to 19 are the most victimized segment of the U.S. population. Children, ages 12 to 15 are victimized at a rate 84% higher then the general population. U.S. Dept. of Justice Statistical Report on Victimization of Children.

Nationally, abduction of female children between the ages of 10 and 18 for purposes of a violent act of a sexual nature, has increased 165% over the last three years. California Crime Statistics for Children.`

Consider this food for thought; 1999 National Women’s Study, a longitudinal telephone survey of a national household probability sample of women at least 18 years of age, shows close to 700,000 women forcibly raped each year and the 84% of rape victims did not report the offense to the police.

Although only about 572,000 reports of assault by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. At least 170,000 of these violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor’s attention. Violence Against Women in the U.S. (2004), http://now.org/issues/violence/stats.html.

Reports from the U.S. Justice Dept. state that every year in the workplace, between one million and four million acts of violence are committed against innocent workers, co-workers, customers and employers alike.

It is, I think, fair to say that at the moment of their victimization, all of these millions of women shared at least one thing in common; none of them had the knowledge or the skills necessary to successfully defend themselves against a violent physical attack.

Following their victimization, these women now share at least five things in common:

• They still don’t have the knowledge or the skills necessary to successfully defend themselves against a violent physical attack. And, they are just as likely to be targeted a second, third or more times, as they were the first time. Many women are attacked multiple times.
• Many, if not all, have a diminished level of self-worth and self-esteem, some to the level of a doormat.
• All have been negatively impacted by their ordeal, some so severely that they may never recover. At the very least, their lives will never be the same again.
• Most of them have friends, family or loved ones who have also been devastated and suffer right along with them.
• All of them walk around every day with fear as their constant companion.

Some years ago, I taught a workshop for 20 abused women who were, along with their children living at a shelter, hiding out from whomever it was that was beating the hell out of them. The workshop went very well. The ladies enjoyed the class and got a lot out of it both physically and emotionally. They left the class with some learned physical skills and a better sense of self-worth and self-esteem; and I left the class with the knowledge that I had made a small but positive influence on their lives.

I was struck, however, by two of these ladies (one in particular), who could hardly stand to be in the room with me because I was a man! Can you imagine someone so abused by a man (or men) that she couldn’t bear to be near one?

In a perfect world, no one would worry about becoming a victim of a violent act. Words like rape, assault, verbal abuse, and domestic violence; kidnapping, torture, mugging and murder would not be a part of our vocabulary. Of course we don’t live in this perfect world and all of these things exist in our lives in epidemic proportions. So much so that it’s fair to say that we have been so de-sensitized to acts of violence that we often ignore stories on the news or casually dismiss them in passing. That is until the story strikes home. Or worse yet, strikes you.

These statistics (and many more not listed here) are horrible, of course, and very real. But, after awhile, statistics start to numb the mind and, in a way, become meaningless to many of us. It’s hard to relate to numbers on a personal basis.

In my case, numbers became personal with the story of Mary Vincent.

In 1976, I co-authored a book that was an instant best seller. I’m told that “Elvis What Happened?” went on to become what was, at that time, the best-selling, original non-fiction, paperback book in the history of publishing. It also received what was, at that time, the largest single order for a book of it’s kind ever received (5,000,000 copies).

Encouraged by the fact that I was now a “best-selling author,” I decided to write another book on a topic that I knew very well. So, I took a year and a half and wrote a 350-page manual on self-defense for women. During the course of this writing, I heard the story of Mary Vincent and, quite simply, it changed my life.

On Friday, March 23, 1979, a San Diego Court jury found Lawrence Singleton guilty of the rape of Mary Vincent. Singleton, who faced a maximum sentence of fourteen years in prison for his crimes, was convicted of rape, kidnapping, sodomy, oral copulation, mayhem and attempted murder, used an axe to chop off both arms of his victim after the sexual assault was finished.

Mary was 15 years old at the time of the attack. My oldest daughter was about the same age and I quickly realized that it could have just as easily been my little girl as anyone’s.

Anyhow, when Mary was found, she was walking around, covered in her own blood, holding the stumps of her arms over her head so that (as she stated) her insides wouldn’t fall out!

A thought or two:

Mary was 15 years old at the time of the attack and in pretty good physical condition. Singleton was in his mid-fifty’s and in horrible physical condition. Over the years, I have taught self-defense to over 40,000 students and all of my experience has proven to me that Mary could have successfully defended herself against this monster----if she only had known how.

I know how.