A Safe Place

  

You've probably heard about Chelsea King, the 17 year-old who went jogging by herself around Lake Hodges in Rancho Bernardo, California, and never came back. A convicted rapist was arrested in connection with her disappearance on Sunday, and Tuesday police found what they think is Chelsea's body. This story hits close to home for me. My family lives in the area, my niece and nephew went to Chelsea's high school, and if I'm not mistaken, my niece has jogged the trails at Lake Hodges a few times herself. When I spoke with my mother on the phone yesterday, she told me that the entire community is in shock. And now, they are in mourning. 

Thousands of people grieve not only for the loss of a girl with a bright future, but for the loss of a safe community. Rancho Bernardo is not a scary place. It's a suburb of San Diego, a tidy California village where people retire and families raise their kids. The schools are top notch. The roads are well paved,the lawns neatly groomed. It's where you can go to Denny's at midnight, confident that no one is going to mug you in the parking lot. And it's where you'd assume that your daughter would be safe going for a run after school. 

But looks can be deceiving. According to feminist.com, "One out of every six American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime." What's more disturbing is that over half of those assaults happen before a girl turns eighteen. Though some claim that a woman who ventures down a dark alley in a sketchy part of town is "just asking for it," turns out it's getting just as dangerous to talk a walk in a park. In the afternoon. Smack in the middle of Suburbia. 

Yesterday on the phone, my mother asked, "You don't still run by yourself, do you?" She sounded worried. I assured her that physically, I can't run very far anymore, if at all. But when I thought about it, I realized that I used to go on solo runs nearly every day, starting in college, when I'd head outside before the sun came up to get my three miles. And in more recent years, I've run from my house to the mouth of a canyon five miles away on a road that is not exactly deserted, but not exactly busy either. As we talked, I could hear my kids playing in the driveway, the steady rhythm of the basketball, the yelps of laughter. A car passed by, and I wondered who was driving, a stranger or a friend. I thought of the children who have gone missing, their stories appearing on the nightly news for weeks until the search is called off, or the bodies are found. I see pictures of missing children on the back page of advertisements that come in my mail box. They always smile in the photographs, looking so little and happy, completely unaware of how one day they will become a statistic. I thought of the few missing children who had, miraculously, been found alive, but broken in ways I do not want to imagine. I have always felt that this kind of thing could never happen to my children or to me, because we are protected from such horrors if only by virtue of where we live. But then again, that's what Chelsea King thought, too.

So I'm wondering what we can do about this alarming trend of violence towards children and teenagers, girls especially. My niece's friend Kendall Pearson Sallay, a San Jose State University student, has an answer. Sallay hopes to add girls-only self defense classes to the California physical education requirements for high school students. If you agree, you can sign her petition here. Personally, I think such skills should be taught in elementary all the way through to college. And if our schools do not teach it, as parents we should. Advising girls to protect themselves by staying in the neighborhood and avoiding the bad parts of town is not enough anymore. Because sometimes you just can't tell what will happen. Or where.

If you would like to learn more about how to protect your family from sexual assault, here's a link to the RAINN.ORG website. 

If you would like self-defense classes to be part of your school's curriculum, contact your state office of education. 

Comments

[Susan Hayward]

Shelby,
So glad you found Brooke safe and sound. It's hard to have a child wander like that. A few of our kids have done the same, and immediately the mind goes to the worst case scenario. I don't know how families survive tragedies like Chelsea King's.

[shelby]

This was a hard post to read today...just yesterday afternoon, I ran a quick errand to my work. While there, Brooke went missing. I was running around to all the surrounding businesses as fast as I could all the while thinking of all the horrible situations she could possibly be in. 20 minutes passed before I found her with two women who had called the police. I arrived the same time the officer did. I went to bed last night, just hours after losing her and felt so grateful I could sleep peacefully and not have to stay up making 'missing child' posters. It is a scary, sad and painful thing to lose a child and that is the closest I EVER want to come to it.

[Susan Hayward]

Yeah, that was my thought too. What a novel idea--PRACTICAL and USEFUL physical education. I think it should be added to the No Child Left Behind thing, only as No Girl Left Unprotected.

[MaryB]

I was just telling Allie that I would have much rather taken self-defense classes all the way through school than half-heartedly playing bad mitten (sp?) or handball or just roaming around the p.e. field. Self-defense training is so much more useful too! I signed Kendall's petition...I think it's a great idea!