Protecting our daughters, part 1

Recently I read an article wherein a father told a disturbing story about allowing his daughter to be subjected to continual harassment by a drunk man on a plane. Ironically, even though the father let this man persist in his unacceptable behavior, he actually believes he was protecting his daughter!

The father is Scott Brown. His daughter is Kelly Bradrick. (She was not yet married at the time this took place.) The article appears on the Vision Forum website.

"In 2003, I took my daughter with me on a mission trip to Romania. On the plane, there was a drunken man flirting with her in a very aggressive way. Unfortunately for him, there were 535 pounds of manhood in our party ready to protect her. Believe me, we were exercising much Christian patience with this man who persisted throughout the entire flight. He did not realize that he was facing deadly force, if he persisted. He actually touched her once and was making bold advances. He even continued the pursuit after the plane landed. I am convinced that, if we had not been with her to protect her, she would have been in serious danger." (Read it in context.)

Really? This creep was "facing deadly force, if he persisted"? But this guy DID persist - even after the plane landed - and absolutely nothing happened! Are we really to believe that men who are too cowardly to intervene and protect a woman from such obnoxious behavior are suddenly going to use deadly force? After sitting there passively and allowing his daughter to be mistreated in this way, does Scott Brown honestly think he is capable of manning up if things exceeded even his tolerance? And what were these men patiently waiting for? For the man to get physically violent?

"Unfortunately for him, there were 535 pounds of manhood in our party..." Don't make me laugh. Fortunately for him (from his perspective) these men gave him full permission to persist in his harassment of this young woman. I'm sure he had a wonderful time at Kelly's expense. I can only imagine what sort of awful ordeal the flight was for her.

From this account, I cannot help but conclude the following:

1. Mr. Brown sees no need to protect his daughter from "very aggressive" drunken flirting.

2. He saw nothing wrong with allowing this behavior to continue for the entire flight.

3. He saw no reason to intervene even when this man touched his daughter.

4. His daughter's feelings in this matter were of no concern to him. Can you imagine having to endure this while your father watched passively?

5. It was more important to exercise Christian patience with a man than protect a daughter.

6. He never taught his daughter how to behave in such situations. But, wait - maybe he did: "Exercise Christian patience and do nothing. Let the man's horrible behavior continue without challenge or protest. Here, observe my example."

7. Kelly would have been no less protected if she were traveling alone. She may actually have been safer. Perhaps, in the absence of the passive "manhood" accompanying her, someone else might have intervened - offering to trade seats with her, calling the flight attendant, and/or insisting, "Back off, buddy, and leave the young lady alone!" I know we can't count on being rescued by bystanders; at the same time, in my younger years, I benefitted from men who wouldn't tolerate a woman being treated disrespectfully. In Kelly's case, onlookers must have thought, "Well, if her father is perfectly OK with how she's being treated, why should I jump in?"

The huge irony is that Mr. Brown follows his story with these words:

"Where do we get the idea of protection from the Bible? We could make a long list, but here is a short one. Godly behavior is defined by shepherds who protect their flocks. The strong should support the weak. Women are the weaker vessels. And daughters should be protected by their fathers who are commanded to give 24/7 watch care over their children (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). This is enough for me to be convinced that women should be protected by men."

Let me respond: Please spare young women from your notions of "protection". I can't imagine any man I know allowing me to be treated as your daughter was. And if they did - out of fear perhaps - they would be ashamed. And, if they wrote of it, they would describe it truthfully - not pretending it was an example of the very thing they had so grievously failed to do.



Here are my alternate versions...how I wish things had played out...



Version 1:

In 2003, I took my daughter with me on a mission trip to Romania. On the plane, there was a drunken man flirting with her in a very aggressive way. Unfortunately for him, there were 535 pounds of manhood in our party ready to protect her. Believe me, we were exercising much Christian patience with this man - apparently too much, because an elderly woman seated nearby took matters into her own hands.

"Young man!" she addressed the drunk, even though he was much older than my daughter. "I will not sit back and allow you to treat a young lady in that way. You need to stop immediately or I will ring for the stewardess! Young ladies have the right to travel alone without being molested by strangers!"

I was shamed out of my passivity. Frankly, I'd been afraid to say anything. I didn't want to cause any trouble and I'd been hoping that, if my daughter continued trying to ignore this man's bold advances, he would give up and leave her alone.

"Um..." I said, feeling my face redden, "I'm her father."

"And you see nothing wrong with this man's behavior?" The elderly woman was incredulous. "In my day, fathers protected their daughters!" She then insisted on trading seats with my daughter. The rest of the flight was peaceful...giving me plenty of time to repent and to promise to treat my daughter with far more respect in the future.

Where do we get the idea of protection from the Bible? We could make a long list, but here is a short one. Godly behavior is defined by shepherds who protect their flocks. The strong should support the weak. Women are the weaker vessels. And daughters should be protected by their fathers who are commanded to give 24/7 watch care over their children (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). This is enough for me to be convinced that women should be protected by men.

My failure to protect my daughter on the airplane was without excuse. Thank God for an old-fashioned, elderly woman who taught me by her example.



Version 2:

In 2003, I took my daughter with me on a mission trip to Romania. On the plane, there was a drunken man flirting with her in a very aggressive way. Unfortunately for him, there were 535 pounds of manhood in our party ready to protect her. Even more unfortunately for him, he had no idea who he was dealing with. Kelly turned to face him and said, calmly but firmly, "I will say this once. Leave me alone. Do not speak to me. I am not interested in anything you have to say. Stop harassing me."

He responded with something I will not repeat. Mistake number one. Then he made an even more foolish mistake: he touched my daughter.

We knew what was coming next. Only he had no idea.

She caught his hand. Her hands were moving in a subtle but effective way - we could tell by his gasp of surprise and his grimace - and she kept applying pressure while saying, at twice the volume as before, "DON'T...YOU...DARE...EVER...TOUCH...ME...AGAIN!"

Then she summoned the flight attendant and explained the situation. The man was immediately moved - and this time he was seated by another man.

"You know we were ready to jump in," I assured my daughter.

She grinned. "Yeah, but I had it under control."

"That you did," I agreed.

Sometimes the best way a father can protect his daughter is by making sure she gets excellent self-defense training. Her lessons paid off. So did the hours I let her practice on me. Remembering, I rubbed my wrists, knowing exactly what the drunken man had felt, but I didn't feel sorry for him at all.



Version 3:

In 2003, I took my daughter with me on a mission trip to Romania. On the plane, there was a drunken man flirting with her in a very aggressive way. Unfortunately for him, there were 535 pounds of manhood in our party ready to protect her. We love her too much to allow any man to treat her like that. In addition, we would have intervened even if she had been a complete stranger. But, since she is my daughter, I had zero patience with this man.

"Sir," I said. Once I got his attention, I went on, "That's my daughter. See these other guys here? We are going to make sure you leave her alone."

He sputtered something unrepeatable and I motioned to Kelly to change places with me. Once I was seated next to him, I turned to the drunk and said, "Listen carefully. You have a choice. Either you sit next to me the entire flight or I call the flight attendant and have her find you another seat. After the way you dared speak to my daughter, I think you would be much more comfortable sitting next to anyone but me."

He opted to change seats. I let the flight attendant know why.

Kelly thanked me. Honestly, until she told me how this guy had made her feel, and how much my protection meant to her, I'd been on auto-pilot and my actions seemed like no big deal. Really, all I'd done was trade seats with my daughter and ask some creep to leave her alone. Hardly worth mentioning...but that's not how Kelly saw it.

I learned something that day. It's the simple acts of fatherly protection, the things we do automatically without even thinking, that speak volumes to our daughters. When we are faithful in the little things, they have the confidence to trust us in the big things.




Obviously I prefer happy endings...especially when evil has been thwarted rather than tolerated.

Setting the record straight

As a martial arts and self-defense instructor, I am continually surprised at a number of the myths that people present as facts.

One of the newer myths that some men are attempting to perpetuate, without any sort of proof (because there is none) is that women are just as violent as men, and that women abuse their spouses as often or more often than men do. I just ran across this on the Bayly Blog:

The violence and victims literature tells us women are every bit as violent as men, and lesbian couples are the most violent of all. Even when asked to report on prior heterosexual relationships, lesbians report their present homosexual relationship to be more violent than any prior heterosexual relationship.

No footnotes, of course.

A quick Google search turned up the following:

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, between 1998 and 2002:

• Of the almost 3.5 million violent crimes committed against family members, 49% of these were crimes against spouses.
• 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female.
• Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers
• 50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse.

  Matthew R. Durose et al., U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 207846, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Family Violence Statistics: Including Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances, at 31-32 (2005), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/fvs.pdf

In a 1995-1996 study conducted in the 50 States and the District of Columbia, nearly 25% of women and 7.6% of men were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or dating partner/acquaintance at some time in their lifetime (based on survey of 16,000 participants, equally male and female).

Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, at iii (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm

Sexual Assault According to the National Violence Against Women Survey:

• Women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence than men: 78% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are women and 22% are men.
• Most perpetrators of sexual violence are men. Among acts of sexual violence committed against women since the age of 18, 100% of rapes, 92% of physical assaults, and 97% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men. Sexual violence against men is also mainly male violence: 70% of rapes, 86% of physical assaults, and 65% of stalking acts were perpetrated by men.
• In 8 out of 10 rape cases, the victim knows the perpetrator. Of people who report sexual violence, 64% of women and 16% of men were raped, physically assaulted, or stalked by an intimate partner. This includes a current or former spouse, cohabitating partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, or date.

  Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 183781, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/183781.htm

• Another national survey found that 34% of women were victims of sexual coercion by a husband or intimate partner in their lifetime.
  

  Kathleen C. Basile, Prevalence of Wife Rape and Other Intimate Partner Sexual Coercion in a Nationally Representative Sample of Women, 17 Violence and Victims 511 (2002).

The National Women's Study, a three-year longitudinal study of a national probability sample of 4,008 adult women (2,008 of whom represent a cross section of all adult women and 2,000 of whom are an over sample of younger women between the ages of 18 and 34), found:

• 13% of adult women had been victims of completed rape during their lifetime
• 22% of rape victims were assaulted by someone they had never seen before or did not know well.
• 9% of victims were raped by husbands or ex-husbands.
• 11% were raped by fathers or stepfathers.
• 10% were raped by boyfriends or ex-boyfriends.
• 16% were raped by other relatives.
• 29% were raped by other non-relatives, such as friends and neighbors.

  See Dean G. Kilpatrick et al., Rape in America: A Report to the Nation (1992); Heidi S. Resnick et al., Prevalence of Civilian Trauma and PTSD in a Representative National Sample of Women, 61 J. of Consulting and Clinical Psychol. 984 (1993); Dean G. Kilpatrick et al., A 2-Year Longitudinal Analysis of the Relationship Between Violent Assault and Substance Use in Women, 65 J. of Consulting and Clinical Psychol. 834 (1997); Kilpatrick et al., Rape, Other Violence Against Women, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Critical Issues in Assessing the Adversity-Stress-Psychopathology Relationship, in Adversity, Stress, & Psychopathology 161-176 (Bruce P. Dohrenwend ed., 1998); Dean G. Kilpatrick, Rape and Sexual Assault, Aug. 7, 2006, http://www.musc.edu/vawprevention/research/sa.shtml

11% of lesbians reported violence by their female partner and 15% of gay men who had lived with a male partner reported being victimized by a male partner.

Patricia Tjaden, Symposium on Integrating Responses to Domestic Violence: Extent and Nature of Intimate Partner Violence as measured by the National Violence Against Women Survey, 47 Loy. L. Rev. 41, 54 (2003).

• One survey found that same-sex cohabitants reported significantly more intimate partner violence than did opposite-sex cohabitants. Among women, 39.2% of the same-sex cohabitants and 21.7 of the opposite- sex cohabitants reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked by a marital/cohabiting partner at some time in their lifetime.
  

  Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at 30 (2000), available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm

• 15.4% of same-sex cohabiting men reported being raped, physically assaulted and/or stalked by a male partner, but 10.8% reported such violence by a female partner.
  

  Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at 30 (2000), available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm

Physical Injury and Medical Treatment

• The U.S. Department of Justice reported that 37% of all women who sought care in hospital emergency rooms for violence-related injuries were injured by a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend.
  

  Michael R. Rand, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 156921, Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments, (1997) available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/vrithed.txt

• Women are significantly more likely than men to be injured during an assault: 31.5% of female rape victims, compared with 16.1% of male rape victims, reported being injured during their most recent rape, and 39-42% percent of female physical assault victims, compared with 20-25% of male physical assault victims, reported being injured during their most recent physical assault.
  
• 35.6% of the women injured during their most recent rape and 30.2% of the women injured during their most recent physical assault received medical treatment. Approximately 21.5% of male victims of intimate partner physical assaults that resulted in an injury sought medical treatment.
  

  Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 183781, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000) available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/183781.htm; Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 181867, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, at iv (2000), available at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/181867.htm

Ninety-two percent of women who were physically abused by their partners did not discuss these incidents with their physicians; 57% did not discuss the incidents with anyone. Additionally, in four different studies of survivors of abuse, 70% to 81% of the patients studied reported that they would like their healthcare providers to ask them privately about intimate partner violence.

Panagiota V. Caralis & Regina Musialowski, Women's Experiences with Domestic Violence and Their Attitudes and Expectations Regarding Medical Care of Abuse Victims, 90 S. Med. J. 1075 (1997); Jeanne McCauley et al., Inside 'Pandora's Box': Abused Women's Experiences with Clinicians and Health Services, 13 Archives of Internal Med. 549 (1998); Lawrence S. Friedman et al., Inquiry About Victimization Experiences: A Survey of Patient Preferences and Physician Practices, 152 Archives of Internal Med. (1992); Michael Rodriguez et al., Breaking the Silence: Battered Women's Perspectives on Medical Care, 5 Archives of Fam. Med. 153 (1996).

From: "Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, U.S. Department of Justice, March, 1998"

• Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend each year to 4 million women who are physically abused by their husbands or live-in partners each year.

• While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are 5 to 8 times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.

• Violence by an intimate partner accounts for about 21% of violent crime experienced by women and about 2 % of the violence experienced by men.

• 31,260 women were murdered by an intimate from 1976-1996.

• Females accounted for 39% of the hospital emergency department visits for violence-related injuries in 1994 but 84% of the persons treated for injuries inflicted by intimates.

Over 500,00 women are stalked by an intimate partner each year.

5.3 million women are abused each year.

1,232 women are killed each year by an intimate partner.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women.

Women are more likely to be attacked by someone they know rather than by a stranger.

[from the American Institute on Domestic Violence]


I have no idea what "violence and victims literature" Tim Bayly is referring to, since he does not actually cite any, but this unnamed "literature" cannot be credible if it contradicts the most reliable sources.

As for the article referenced in the Bayly Blog: What sort of man, instead of calling the police, instead of leaving his wife, would sign "a contract with his wife that entitles her to attack him once a week"? Why not sign a contract that entitling him to live free of attack from her? Why not go to her kung fu sifu and demand that she not be allowed to misuse her martial arts? Something about this story is very fishy indeed...almost as fishy as the unsubstantiated statements Tim Bayly makes about domestic violence.

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Warning to parents

Please, please, please monitor what your children are doing online. Read their blogs, their MySpace pages, their Facebooks pages, etc. Watch the videos they want to post on YouTube --- before they post them.

Do not let your children post their email addresses publicly. Do not let them email or instant message or chat with people they do not know, especially adults.

Be careful about what personal information your children post. Is it really wise for them to be posting pictures of themselves, their families, their church, their home, etc. for all the world to see? Do you really want to give potential online predators or con artists ammunition to use against your children or your family?

Please protect your children. Please.

This post, along with my entire blog, is copyrighted. Please read and honor the copyright notice on the bottom of this page. Thank you.

Be careful out there

For more background, read "Internet Identities"

As someone who teaches self-defense, I'm growing increasingly concerned about the careless risks some women take on the internet. Here are just a few recent things I've encountered that I'd like to pass on as warnings:

1. Please don't think that your "private" email list of you and hundreds of your closest, trusted friends, all hosted by Yahoo, is really private. Can you personally vouch for every single one of those hundreds upon hundreds of other people as being trustworthy enough for you to disclose your innermost thoughts, feelings, personal information, and deep dark secrets to them? If you don't want your emails to them going outside of that special circle, do you really want it going to the hundreds of strangers inside that circle?

2. Please don't think that the lady who sits next to you at church...or your pastor...or your employer...won't ever stumble across what you've written online that you hope they will never find out.

3. If you like keeping a journal that you really don't want strangers to read, don't throw that journal up onto the internet. If you do have a public blog, people will assume that you actually want it to be read. It will only make you look silly if you get your knickers all in a twist over people reading and discussing what you've posted!

4. If you do have a blog --- unless you keep it private by carefully restricting access to it --- you should expect that anyone...ANYONE...can read it. That means people you don't like, people you don't know, people who might want to harm you, people looking for someone to victimize, and people you might never expect to read your blog --- like your husband, pastor, employer, or the little lady next door.

5. Don't give out too much personal information. Even on your blog or myspace page or whatever. You don't know who could be reading what you've written.

6. Just because you delete an email you've already sent, or a blog post you've already made public, doesn't make it vanish. You don't know what someone may be saving on their hard drive. You don't know what feeds and readers may have picked up your blog post. You don't know what archiving systems may be in place. As some people warn, the internet is FOREVER. Choose your words carefully and wisely.

Your safety may depend on it. So may your reputation. So may the reputation of our precious Lord and Savior.

Be careful out there. Please.

This post, along with my entire blog, is copyrighted. Please read and honor the copyright notice on the bottom of this page. Thank you.

Internet identities

I've been part of several online discussions where women have been taken to task for not revealing their names (other than an internet "handle" or nickname), for not revealing their full names, or for not revealing other personal information such as where they lived, what church they attended, the name of their pastor, etc. Usually it's been men who have gotten their knickers all in a twist over a woman not wanting to give out all her personal information, and I've usually cut the men some slack because...well, they just have no idea. (It reminds me of the time that my husband was shocked...I mean SHOCKED!...to discover that there was no honor code among criminal sorts and that mothers with babies were not safe from harm.)

Usually when I've explained internet safety in these discussions, the men have --- sometimes very reluctantly --- come to see that there is great wisdom in women not revealing their names and personal information online.

Back when I was brand, spanking new online, I was advised by some of my friends who were internet savvy that the safest approach was to adopt a gender-neutral "handle" and avoid disclosing anything of a personal nature. So that's what I did. However, that led to some humorous email exchanges when men in online theological discussions would assume I was also a man and would email me with a hearty "Amen, brother!"

All that came to a screeching halt when I set up my first website in order to provide an online means of distributing a paper that I'd written. Suddenly my name and some personal info was out there for all the world to see.

There has been a real downside to that, and it's one that I would warn women strongly against. Literally within hours of my full name appearing on the internet, I received a horrible, threatening, violently obscene email. Sent anonymously, of course --- but using my full name.

I have received threats since then. I've learned to be wary of "innocent" questions, such as, "What sort of car do you drive with all of your children?" I've had people figure out who my pastor was at the time, and harass him. I've had people email me that they know where we live and that maybe it's not a good idea, if I love my children, to let them play in the front yard. I've received emails telling me that I need to be "stopped permanently", and maybe the email author will take that task upon himself. I've been told that I'm "easy to follow".

So I tried to become anonymous again. My attempts have never worked. Apparently my writing style is so distinctive (odd grammar, constant typos, bizarre punctuation, and use of sayings such as "more than the socially acceptable number of children") that people instantly recognize me and "out" me.

My children are older now. As a family, we have become more public, at least in some arenas. Two of my adult children have their own online presences. I'm less careful than I used to be, back in the day when I removed all photos from my website after the first threat against our family.

It's been a long time since I've received any real threats (other than the usual chest-thumping "Give me your husband's email address" type nonsense that is laughable on so many levels) Maybe it's because we're trained martial artists. Maybe it's because I've posted a picture here and there of one of my sons who looks quite imposing and would prove a formidable opponent to any threatener, especially the out of shape blow-hard types.

BUT...

If I had to do it all over again, I would stay anonymous. I've been extremely blessed --- I can't even be positive that any of those who threatened me actually turned up in person. There were a few times when different guys parked across the street and watched our house. I ran them off. Usually all it took was going out with a clipboard and making a big show of writing down their license plate numbers. (NOTE: Eldest Son was watching from inside, phone in hand, with 911 already punched in.)

However, I know people who have been stalked. I've read the horror stories of online predators. Not every victim survives.

I urge women to stay anonymous online, if at all possible. While I cut some slack to naive men for not understanding basic safety issues, I have far less patience for women who make a big deal out of demanding to know personal information about others. Just because a woman may delight in giving out her full name, posting her family pictures, and being all chatty about every detail of her life does not mean she has the right to demand that of everyone. Just because a woman may be willing to take that sort of risk does not mean she should encourage other women to cast safety aside.

Another warning: I could easily create an online persona, complete with fake name and fake gender, and claim to be anybody I wanted. I could even find some pictures of someone else and post them as my own. People do this ALL THE TIME. Grown men pose as young teenage girls in order to prey on trusting young girls. The person who posts in your favorite online discussions may go by the name of "Tusnelda Jones" all over the internet and may have a blog with pictures purported to be her smiling face --- but that doesn't mean she is who she claims to be. Unless you've met her in person, you should be very careful about answering any of "her" questions --- especially if she's hounding you to post your real name online. And...be very cautious about meeting her in person, no matter how many emails you've exchanged and how well you think you know her.

Be careful out there. Be very careful.

And those of you who have the wisdom to be anonymous online --- don't let anyone pressure you otherwise. Stand firm. Anyone who doesn't respect your privacy and your safety has, in my opinion, no right to know anything about you...and their motives are highly suspect.