The Socially Skilled Child Molester

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About a month ago I posted about a book I just read, Identifying Child Molesters, by Carla van Dam, PhD (2001). Today I’m reporting on another of her books, The Socially Skilled Child Molester: Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused (2006). While there’s a lot of overlap in content between the two, the difference of five years does give each its own flavor.
Book: The Socially Skilled Child Molester by Carla van Dam PhD
A bit more historical context for Dr. van Dam’s work. In the 1990s, “stranger danger” was the big thing. However, most children who are harmed, both then and now, are targeted by someone they know. Dr. van Dam’s 2001 book detailed strategies used by these abusers.

In this second book, Dr. van Dam draws us composite of a few types of child molesters, based on thousands of interviews. Each composite profile is characterized by their particular approach to grooming the communities, parents, and children upon whom they prey.

  • Businessman Bob is successful and charming. Even after being convicted of molesting his oldest daughter and going through “treatment,” he is welcomed back into the community and even manages to wrest custody of his three younger daughters from his ex-wife.
  • Marvelous Moving Marvin, an enthusiastic young man, seems always available for baby-sitting, helping out at summer camps, winter camps, day care, you name it. When too many rumors about inappropriate behavior around the youth begin swirling, though, he moves on to another town and begins the process all over again.
  • The Divine Dr. Dan is a diligent medical doctor, who misuses his expertise to make sure all the boys on his camping or fishing or baseball or skiing trips are healthy by taking their temperatures rectally and examining their penises.
  • Cranky Coach Carl is not particularly socially skilled, but he makes up for that by being a winning coach. His peculiarities are masked by the league considering him “old school” and just a bit of a disciplinarian.
  • Bottom-Feeder Buddy is likewise not particularly socially skilled, not to the same level as Bob, Marvin, or Dan. But then he sets his sights lower, going after struggling single moms (with daughters) who are SO happy to be dating a man who occasionally does laundry and makes a dinner.  He, too, moves on to another town as the daughters age out of his interest.

In The Socially Skilled Child Molester, Dr. van Dam frames this abuse as a form of addiction. There are implications to thinking sexual abuse as paralleling substance abuse. The abusers have organized their whole lives around grooming families, setting up situations, and gaining access to children. Every relationship, career choice, or location move is based on access to molesting children. And, unless they get treatment, they will continue that behavior.

Can they successfully be treated? Two of these composite characters went through “treatment,” and learned how to better mask their tracks in the future.

Dr. van Dam refers many times to how others often enable abusers, citing the then-recent example of the Catholic Church moving abusive priests from parish to parish, without ever giving parishioners any warning. Maybe you remember that 20 years ago, in 2002, The Boston Globe published a series of articles exposing how bishops would move abusive priests, come to private deals with families that included clauses that barred victims and families from every discussing it, and the immense number of sealed court documents. In a nutshell, the idea was that each incident would be considered just a one-off, that any errant priest was a lone offender, and the real magnitude of the issue got buried. Until reporters at The Boston Globe ran their exposé.

The subtitle of this book is Differentiating the Guilty from the Falsely Accused. Dr. van Dam does bring that topic up a few times. Her thinking is that the guilty are the addicts who organize their lives around finding, grooming, and molesting targets. The innocent, on the other hand, do not. I’m not sure, though, that she focuses enough on that topic to make it a whole subtitle. Perhaps it’s what we’d now call a click-bait title. Because overall we are so afraid of embarrassing or ruining the reputation of a charming professional person who happens to offer very convenient services that we feel initially better off overlooking their “idiosyncrasies.” Unless it hits your family.  As Dr. van Dam states in the Introduction, “[t]he consistency of the practices and strategies of the well-socialized Groomers being examined in this book are successful because of continued public ignorance.”   To borrow a phrase from another famous public figure, as long as we willfully ignore another inconvenient truth, we will continue to allow these molesters to hide in plain sight.

Recognizing the ploys and manipulations of child molesters, as well as adult molesters, is an essential part of our curricula.  Visit our website to find a class that fits your needs.

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Awareness While Walking: A Success Story

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An often-asked question, or sometimes it’s not even phrased as a question, is about awareness while walking.  Students sometimes say, “I don’t feel I’m as aware as I think I could be, or should be,” and leave that dangling; is it a question, like asking for how to become more aware, or simply a statement of something they’d like to change?  Sometimes its parents complaining that their teens are too focused on their phones and not as cognizant of their surroundings as they could be.  Whichever, awareness is helpful.  Here’s one success story.

One of my students, probably about 7 or 8 years ago, was a high school junior.  She was in the six-week Self-Defense 101 class, along with several of her friends.  They were all attentive, and took their personal safety seriously as they were becoming more and more independent.  One late spring day she and another friend (who was not in this class) were walking down California Avenue in West Seattle, near the Junction.  For those not familiar with the area, it’s a commercial street with lots of restaurants, boutiques, and a wide variety of small businesses.  Generally a robust and busy street.  As they walked and chatted, a young male across the street got her attention.  She noticed that he seemed to be keeping pace with her, and each time she glanced over it appeared his head had just quickly swiveled forward.  Red flags, by her accounting.  Because if you’re walking in public and notice that the same person is in about the same location relative to you several times, they’re very likely following you. 

She decided to keep up her awareness while walking, as she and her friend chatted.  But when they got to the next Awareness while walking enhances both safety and your enjoyment of the momentintersection, he crossed the street; some streets are “all ways walk” when the pedestrian light goes green, so you can cross at a diagonal, which he did.  Now he was in front of them.

As they walked, my student noticed this young man began slowing down.  She and her friend were getting closer and closer.  When they were just maybe two yards behind, he just stopped.  Simple stopped walking.  My student and her friend did notice, and moved laterally to walk around him.  As they passed, the young man also moved laterally, literally bumping into them. He seemed to stumble.  

My student’s friend, who was the one who actually got bumped, turned to the man and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, are you OK?”  Apparently she wasn’t sure who did the bumping, even though this guy had to move sideways to bump into them.  The guy replied, speaking VERY slowly, “yeah, . . . I think  . . .  I’m . . .”  That’s as far as he got.  My student linked arms with her friend, made eye-to-face contact, and told the man, “we really need to be going,” and just walked off with her friend.  As they left she began telling her friend about her observations. 

Let’s just summarize the red flags she noticed:

  • He was in the same location, relative to them, several times,
  • seemed to quickly look away each time she glanced in his direction,
  • slowed down directly in front of them,
  • stopped directly in front of them,
  • moved sideways, right into them, as they tried to walk by,
  • seemed to stumble (my student thought it was faked), and
  • tried to keep them present by engaging in a slowed-down conversation.

Note this student could have dismissed any of these behaviors as insignificant, or decided she was over-reacting or even label herself as paranoid.  But instead she recognized the overall pattern, and trusted her gut feelings that her “awareness while walking” sense of red flags was real.  And that is success.

Stay safe, live life.

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What If He Gets Angry?

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A frequent question:  What if he gets angry?  As March (a/k/a Women’s Herstory Month) slips into April (Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month), it’s a good time to consider how our past assumptions impact our current situations.  Our herstory is not sequestered in the past.  It is alive and often seething, usually out of sight and out of mind.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not that far away, women heard that, if assaulted, they should not resist.  Yes, you read that correctly.  They were told they’d be better off not fighting back.  Because the assailant, always male, was certainly bigger and stronger and there was NO WAY a woman could fend off that bigger, stronger, masculine assailant.  A woman who would try to fight back would only further enrage the assailant, and she’d end up getting hurt worse.  Of course there were no studies, no data, but who could dispute the obvious?

Like many other “obvious” truths, this one stood neither the test of time nor data.  Women who fight back are more likely to escape.  Women who speak up are more likely to not get assaulted.  And women who recognize the early behaviors that they are being targeted — and then enforce their boundaries — are far less likely to experience attempted assault.  We know more about the social dynamics surrounding assault.  But this is not news, we’ve known most of this for at least 40 years.

Yet, even today, I’m still often asked “what if he gets angry?”

Well, what if he DOES get angry?  Most of the time anger is an attempt at intimidation, which often works.  There’s the fear that a situation can spiral into physical violence, which does happen (though not as often as you’d think).  You have some quick decisions to make, and it would be helpful if you gave the matter some thought in advance. 

If you yield to their anger, are you safer? 

Is it sustainable in the long term?  Or you can chose a couple of specific verbal skills (broken record, distraction, direct confrontation) and script out some responses.  And maybe it’s a good time to learn (or refresh) your physical skills, just in case.

Stay safe, live life.

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Found Weapon

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Good morning!  This is my first blog post of this new year.  And it’s another chilly wintery rainy day in the glorious Emerald City that is Seattle.

Today I’m talking about a self-defense success story with a “found” weapon.  About a decade ago I was working with a downtown company.  They brought me in to teach their staff some self-defense, because one had been assaulted, right by their building.

She was on her break, and gone downstairs for a cigarette.  As she stood near the entry, she could not help but notice the youngish man walking and yelling.  She noticed that he was dressed well, seemed well groomed, and decided he must be on a phone call (remember back then we had these bluetooth earpieces that made us look oh so cool?).  So her attention to him drifted away — for about two seconds.  Next thing she knew, that same youngish man had her slammed against the wall, and his hands were around her throat.  And then, almost as suddenly, he was running away; she realized she had thrust her still-lit cigarette into his neck.  

Now, I am not saying you should take up smoking so you can have a lit cigarette as your found weapon.  However, when somebody does catch your attention, pay more mind to their behavior than to their attire.  The suit and tie is just the wrapping paper, it tells you little about the contents, about their character or intent or state of mind.

Think of how you can use other everyday objects as your found weapon, should you need to.  Pick up something, anything.  Hold it, look at it, turn it in your hands.  How can you use it against someone else’s vulnerabilities?  Try a few slow-motion practice strikes.  What do I have nearby?  Oh a paintbrush.  Not exactly the strongest stick, but if I grip it close to the end can I use it to poke someone’s eye or throat?  What do you have nearby?

Winter term classes are still in person, and open for registration.  Proof of vaccination is required, wearing your mask is required, and we’re making sure air circulation and filtration is in place and running.  

Stay safe, live life.

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Is Your Personal Alarm Going Off Yet?

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Seattle Police Chief Diaz

Seattle’s Police Chief Diaz (right) mingles with the community.

Last week I participated in Seattle’s Chinatown – International District’s National Night Out event.  There was a good turnout, and lots of food.  The Fire Department brought in trucks, and excited kids swarmed around them as hoses and ladders and other gear come out.  The Police Department also had officers present, and Chief Diaz mingled with the crowd.  I conducted a short interactive demo on some self-defense physical skills and using your voice.  There were booths with info on recycling, public spaces cleanup, assistance for those affected by the COVID pandemic, and personal safety.  The most popular booth by far was the personal safety one, they were giving out safety accessories.  Flashlights, whistles, and alarms.  These were so popular that people were allowed to choose only ONE device to take home.  Most popular device?  Personal alarm.

Chinatown - International District National Night Out Safety Booth

This safety booth was giving out flashlights, whistles, and personal alarms.

I already have a flashlight (in fact, I have multiple flashlights), and a couple of whistles, but not a personal alarm.  So I picked one up to play with.  Pretty easy to work, just pull the pin and voila!  loudness.  At least if you are right next to it.  Not so much if you’re a few yards away.  Down the block, not really.  Its effectiveness is mainly on the person(s) right in arms’ length.  You turn it off by re-inserting the pin, which you hopefully you would not have dropped.  Or you can pop the battery.  It’s plastic, probably not particularly durable, and if you don’t use it for a while you’ll want to check to make sure the battery’s not dead.  I spent a few minutes working with it to see if I could operate it with one hand, that was a bit awkward.

Any time you consider carrying a personal safety accessory, please learn how to use it, and practice.  Even something so simple as a personal alarm or a whistle can be surprisingly difficult to wrangle when you are under stress.  Will you remember which end to pull on this alarm?  How strongly do you have to blow to get sound from the whistle?  Where’s the flashlight’s on switch?  And sometimes, under duress, people even forget what they have in their hands.

At this Night Out event there was a definite emotional undercurrent.  You probably have heard, and everyone at the gathering had this on the top of their minds, in the last year and a half Asians in the United States have experienced an increased number of street assaults and hate crimes.  Many in the Asian communities are alarmed about not only these assaults, but also that there seems to be little concern from the greater Seattle community.  One local activist, Jolene Jang, is organizing allies to be more effective in bringing not only attention but solutions to anti-Asian hate crime.  Can you participate?  Check out her Facebook group.

I’ve got my fall class schedule up, lots of new offerings for both the six-week course and single-session classes.  Some of these classes include de-escalation and bystander intervention.  Most people don’t help because they don’t quite know how, and you can get to practice some skills and get more comfortable with the idea of actively creating a safer city.  Contact me if you want to know which classes will have more of this content.

As always, stay safe and live life.

#StopAsianHate #BlackLivesMatter

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LOUD

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using your voice LOUDGood morning, today is Wednesday July 21, 2021.  Another nice, if hazy, morning in the Emerald City.  And I’m quite happy that most classes this month have been in-person.  

In these classes we cover recognizing when someone bumps into one of your boundaries, and how you can fix that boundary.  Most of the time, when we set boundaries, we talk in conversational tones.  That is, at the volume you normally use when having a conversation with another person.  But sometimes you want to get louder.  I’ve been asking my students WHEN they want to get loud.  The answers are interesting, but usually are in response to a different but related question.

Students tend to reply:

  • When they’re getting angry
  • When they think someone isn’t listening
  • When too many people are talking
  • When frustrated with someone else
  • When they feel they’re not being heard
  • Or when they feel they’re not being taken seriously

I think the question they are hearing is “when DO you get louder,” rather than “when do you WANT TO get louder.”  They’re thinking about what others do to that trigger their LOUD response.  Given that the question is in the context of a self-defense class (students are assuming a stressful interaction, rather than a fun party or celebration), it’s not surprising they’d look to emotions that center around anger.  The question I’m trying to ask is more strategic.  When do you WANT to get loud?  When do you think getting loud is a USEFUL response?

See, if you get loud when you get angry, you risk being played.  Someone just has to figure out your hot buttons, and WHAM! they can get the reaction THEY want.  People who are manipulative do this all the time.  It’s one of the easiest ways to shift “responsibility” for a bad interaction from them to you.  And when your knee-jerk reactions are triggered, your safety decisions are usually less sound.

I think there are these three situations when you may WANT to get loud:

  • When you want to attract attention, you want other people around to look.  Most perpetrators want to commit assault without interference, in relative isolation
  • When you believe the perpetrator thinks you’ll be easy to intimidate, or have been intimidated.  
  • And when you need to get physical and hit the perpetrator, when you need to use physical self-defense skills to disable the perpetrator so that you can safely escape. 

And in our self-defense classes we do practice various strike to vulnerable targets.  It’s a LOT easier done in-person, more challenging in the virtual world.  

And when we practice our strikes, we always use our voices.  LOUDLY.

Going forward, most classes will be in-person.  Those through Seattle Central College and Bellevue College may still be virtual this Fall, we’re just not sure right now about available space on campus.  My Fall schedule should be rolling out in the next week or so.

And that’s it for today.  Stay safe, life life.

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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Good morning again, today is Friday, July 16, 2021, coming to you from the glorious Emerald City that is Seattle, WA.  This month we’ve been teaching in-person classes, and it’s been so good to get back to working with students in the same room.  Classes are still small, masks are still required, because COVID cases are again on the rise.  I’m asking that all students who are eligible be vaccinated, and guess what, you have been!  Sure it’s been a small, self-selected sample, and yet it seems that everyone has been eagerly forthright about their vaccination status.  You’ve been considerate of the needs of, and risks to, all class participants (that includes yourself).

And that brings us to RESPECT.  Not just a great Aretha Franklin song.  The word does have a range of nuance, like most meaningful words, and these nuances and contexts make a difference.

You can respect a position.  Someone’s job title, station in life, authority.  You don’t have to like that person, you don’t have to agree with that person, you don’t have to know that person, and you can still respect their authority.  Teachers, pastors, coaches, law enforcement, those are some of the typical positions that expect their authority will be respected.

You can respect a person who has a position of authority.  You can hold that individual in high esteem, you can admire them, even revere them.  You may consider them an expert.  You may not know much about them as a person, but you hold their public persona or accomplishments in high regard.  Dr. Anthony Fauci fills that roll for many today.

Or maybe someone you know personally has earned your respect, via their actions and behavior, their honesty and integrity and even expertise.
Dictionary definition - expecting respect as deference
According to my pocket dictionary/thesaurus, one expectation of this kind of respect can be deference.  A yielding to someone else’s authority.  

Showing respect as consideration of othersAccording to this same dictionary, here’s another aspect to respect.  Consideration for others’ rights and wishes.  This is how you show respect.  On one side, there’s the respect coming to you, on the other there’s you showing respect for someone.

And then there’s the respect of treating someone like, well, another human.  Not dependent on status or position or wealth.  A basic level of respect, due to the fact that all humans are created equal.

So, what does this have to do with your personal safety?  I’ll bet you can see where this is going.  There can be conflict when a person has status or a job title or accomplishments and they assume they’re owed respect, but their personal behavior is less than respectable.  And maybe they feel you’re not showing enough deference.  They may say, or imply, something like since you’re not respecting them, they won’t respect you either.  Meaning if you don’t defer to them, they will cease treating you like a human.  But these two aspects of respect are neither equivalent nor interchangeable.  This is becomes a power dynamic.  

In our self-defense classes we talk a lot about recognizing “red flags,” which are boundary violations, often showing up as these power dynamics.  Manipulation of respect in this way is a red flag, poking a boundary to see how compliant you could be when confronted with a claim of authority and need for respect.  Know your rights, find your allies, and consider how you can limit your contact with that person.

That’s it for today.

We’re continuing in-person self-defense classes through August and September, probably the whole fall.  Hopefully ongoing.  There will still be a couple of virtual classes.  Masks probably will still be required for a while.  We want our students and staff to be safe.

So stay safe, live life. 

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Independence and Freedom

fireworksWelcome to July!  When I think of July, fireworks and BBQ are on the top of my brain.  We celebrate July 4th, and the founding of America about 245 years ago.  We celebrate independence and freedom.  Today we live in unusual times. And we are confronted with competing visions of independence and freedom.
 
Independence and freedom are two of our most revered American values, our most celebrated virtues. And two that, in these uncertain time, seem to more and more divide us as a nation.
 
As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are equally human. That we all have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we are entitled to a representative government to safeguard and enforce these rights. And we are entitled to organize and advocate for change when our elected officials fall short.
 
As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I very strongly believe that any “information” that encourages you to make someone else’s life smaller, based on their race/gender expression/ethnicity/sexual orientation/nationality/etc., is neither useful nor empowering to you, nor to anyone else.
 
As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I very strongly believe that everyone deserves safety, regardless of their political beliefs. But the harm that has been codified, institutionalized, and currently enforced upon broad swaths of our people, is not in keeping with our foundational values.
 
And, as an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I say you do not have to relinquish your power. You do have power. Alice Walker has said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Keep in mind that nobody will give you power — you need to take it (I believe Frederick Douglass said something like that).  (We can help you practice and hone many of these skills.)
 
Please continue contacting your elected officials, singularly or en masse, to ask them to use the power we entrusted to them to end these policies of purposefully traumatizing and harming our communities. Protest. Donate. Participate.
 
You may need to remind your fellow citizens too, on occasion, that you have the right to live in peace and dignity. Sad, but unusual times brings out the best in some people and the worst in others.
 
Independence isn’t a once-and-done deal, sealed with the signing of a piece of parchment. It wasn’t perfect then, it’s not perfect now, it probably never will be perfect.  We are a work in progress, we are not absolved from working on progress. And we have a long way to go. 
 
Stay safe, live life.
#StopAsianHate #BlackLivesMatter