Children's Self-Protection Seminar in Denmark Part 2 (diary entry)

24.02.13

“When Parents Aren’t Around 2:

Anti-Abduction Seminar”

CCMA’s anti-abduction seminar is a bolt-on course that follows the general children’s self-protection seminar, “When Parents Aren’t Around”. The course is specifically designed to focus on adult-on-child self-protection situations, covering both the personal security and self-defence sides. As with all CCMA seminars, material was presented via PowerPoint multi-media and applied, where possible, through various physical exercises and pressure tests.  

The seminar began with a revision of R.A.C.D.O. (Respect, Awareness, Courage, Discipline and Open Mind), the underpinning tenets of our self-protection programmes.  These need to be in place in order for an individual to act properly in a self-protection situation.

We began by addressing the nature of abduction and looked at footage of an actual attempted abduction, noting what tactics a child used to foil the attack. We then went back to the beginning and looked at the preventative measures that should be in place, such as the protocol a child should follow when they go anywhere alone or without adult supervision.  We revised the Cooper Colour Code to bring awareness points into context. This brought us up to the issue relating to being approached by a potential abductor.

We looked at various psychological warning signs for an individual who seeks to control a situation. These help children to identify human predatorial behaviours  - not to mention salesmen! I am very sceptical over the whole “Stranger Danger” concept. I feel it is impractical and largely a gimmick. My concern is to get children thinking independently about their survival – after all that is the nature of self-protection – and that means being able to approach strangers and also to identify threats that come in the form of people they might know. If a child is alone and in trouble they need to seek help. That help will come in the form of a stranger. They need to select the right type of stranger. A short test proved that many children and several adults trusted a notorious serial killer and mistrusted a famous philanthropist/pacifist. Therefore, it was apparent that children needed to be looking for behaviours (i.e. a woman with children) rather than how someone merely looked. Statistically there are far more cases of children being attacked and/or abducted by someone they know than by a person unknown to them. The sit-down discussion that followed addressed what children actually knew about different people they came across in their lives.

More footage showed the importance of getting adult support in an abduction scenario. The footage also showed how the unexpected can happen. In this instance an individual attempted to abduct two children from a class who were being walked by their teacher down a road. Unlike the previous footage, which was an aggressive assault, the individual was using a much calmer approach.

We used the Predator and Prey exercise/pressure test pitting adult instructors against children. It was very encouraging to see how this exercise ha d progressed from the previous day’s seminar. Abductions were very realistic and demonstrated how quickly they occur, also the classic responses untrained people fall into i.e. freezing. “Bad” adutls or predators used both sudden aggressive approaches and deception, as the exercise was progressed. However, what came over more than anything else was the improvement in trained responses. Children screamed to sound the alert and for help in the correct manner, getting assistance from the “good” adults. They also grouped together to avoid being singled out – a rule learnt from the previous day by the older children who played the role of the predators – and aided one another. This latter point was raised later: how do you recruit support and snap stunned people into acting in a productive way should an abduction attempt occur. Physical tactics used were good even without them being address yet with children fighting hard and screaming at the same time.

I feel what better confirms any of my practical training is the fact that after most exercises, there is a discussion. Everyone has a chance to question the point of the activity and its effectiveness. It can be improved/adapted and, most importantly, its purpose is reinforced. This is why a game of build-up tig/tag can suddenly become an exercise in evasion.

We moved onto the fence, which has to be adapted for adult-on-child situations. The problems here are two-fold and both relate to the issue of range. Depending on the age of a child, there is going to be a considerable difference in reach.  This means an adult will get past their fence far faster than another child. Depending on the development of their brains, children often have problems judging distances. What I teach is to take is an approach more linked to Southeast Asian martial arts and chimpanzee attacks on humans. The child attacks what comes into their space if they cannot access an exit point immediately. This concept was introduced with a simple slap and run drill, where the child strikes the hand coming towards them and runs.

After lunch we embarked on a series of obstacle exercises. First children got used to jumping over, stepping over, barging through, walking along and stepping over various obstacles at different heights. The obvious benefits here are for children to train methods of escape. When it comes to escape, the primary and ultimate plan for children in all self-defence situations, children need to understand the advantages their diminutive size gives them. Escape is often a much neglected area of self-defence training and yet it is very important. The French system of Parkour has raised awareness of this, although their self-defence method is now largely known in its more flamboyant form, free-running.

 Next the course was added to with the children having to strike targets at every obstacle. This teaches constant attack and the ability to be able to fight from any position. It also brings in how else the fence can be utilized. As Geoff Thompson, the pioneer of the fence concept, explained in his earliest public teachings, the fence is a concept and anything that can act as barrier can be a “fence”. With the range and strength issues more evident with adult-on-child self-defence, utilization of obstacles and weapons must be considered a high priority in training.

Having done the fixed obstacle course, we moved onto an exercise where children were pursued by each other first and then by adults. Here they were encouraged to use improvised obstacles; everything from items on the floor to other adults. They improvised shields, percussive and projectile weapons as they kept running until they made it to their exit point. Using the transitional posture training taught on the previous day, students practiced striking and shielding themselves with improvised weapons in solo drills.

The practical part of the session finished, as it did yesterday, with a code white reaction test. Here students closed their eyes and responded to physical stimulus, hopefully using the skills they had learned over the weekend.

The lesson finished with a discussion on what to do after a situation has occurred, including reporting procedure. There was then a questions and answers session, where several of the day’s topics were elaborated on. The most significant one was the “bystander effect” and how to defeat it. This was a query raised by a child and a very valid one.

My experience in Denmark teaching at Hinnerup Karate for Jan Drachmann and his instructors counts among my favourite experiences in CCMA’s history. I was made most welcome and I found everyone to be very receptive to my methods. I look forward to our continued relationship and to hearing more feedback from this exceptionally open-minded and progressively thinking club.