Sunday, February 14, 1999
Children learn how to escape abduction
Seminar emphasizes confidence over fear
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The atmosphere seemed lighthearted as dozens of parents and their children watched a boy learning to flail his arm in what the instructor called the windmill technique.
But at a seminar inside the Capital Children's Museum, whose motto asserts that “learning is an adventure,” families were learning ways to prevent child abduction.
The instructor, Bob Stuber, a former police officer from the San Francisco Bay Area, is an expert on child abduction. The windmill technique, Mr. Stuber explained, is intended to help a child escape an abductor's grasp by swinging an arm in a rapidly circular motion.
The seminar, called Escape School, was sponsored by the museum last month. It is one of hundreds conducted each year, some in person and some on local television. The program is sponsored by Service Corp. International, an association of funeral homes and cemeteries.
Mr. Stuber started the Escape School about five years ago after writing a book titled Missing! Stranger Abduction: Teaching Your Child How to Escape.
“Child abduction is a crime that has been left in the shadows,” Mr. Stuber said. “Of 125,000 attempted abductions each year, 4,500 are successful; and that's too many.”
Looking for options
Escape School teaches important tips. When playing away from home, for example, a child should run away from any person who makes the child nervous. Children are also cautioned about adults who ask them for directions, or bait them with a pet.
If a child is abducted in a car, Mr. Stuber said, the child should try to throw something out of the car to attract attention. At a stoplight or stop sign, the child can reach over and step on the accelerator to bump the car in front.
Mr. Stuber said he faced the quandary of how to instruct children without creating unreasonable fear. His approach focuses on options available to the child, and on instilling confidence rather than fear.
“I wanted to produce a program that could enhance the fact that people are basically good — the world is basically good, but that there are dangers,” he said.
Practical results
Ron and Jeanne Schellhase of Bethesda, Md., took their daughter Kristin, 10, to the seminar. Mr. Schellhase said he was amazed at how Mr. Stuber clearly conveyed situations in which a child should “be aggressive and go against what you are traditionally taught.”
Mr. Stuber told the children: “You are always two choices away from safety. We're going to teach you how to think about something in a manner in which you won't lose your choice.”
Escape School has achieved practical results. Last year, 11-year-old Ashlie Chumley of Houston was abducted from the hallway of her church. Having seen Escape School on television a year earlier, she escaped from her abductor by waiting until his car slowed down, and then jumping out. She found her way back to the church by running more than a mile in the dark, following the glow of a steeple on a church that she remembered was next to her own. Within 45 minutes, she was back with her family.
“I had intended for my children to watch it as a sort of self-defense course for later when they were teen-agers,” Ashlie's mother, Debbie Chumley, said about Escape School, “but I never expected that she would need to use it this soon.”
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