Diamond Defense Podcast: Ep. 05 – Active Compliance

Trigger warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault and violence with mentions of survival strategies and evidence preservation. Listener discretion is advised. 

Lisa breaks down “Active Compliance” — survival through instinct, awareness, and evidence preservation. Learn the ALERT system and real tactics for staying safe, empowered, and fiercely alive. 

The information shared is for general awareness only, not legal or medical advice, and not a guarantee of safety or outcome. Throughout this episode, we may refer to the perpetrator as he or him for clarity. We acknowledge that anyone of any gender can commit acts of violence. 

Sexual Assault Resources
Have you or someone you love been sexually assaulted or abused? 
National Sexual Assault Hotline – 800-656-4673

https://rainn.org/help-and-healing/hotline/

Self Defense Resources
https://diamonddefense.com/resources

💎Learn more at https://diamonddefense.com/
💎If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review it — help everyone shine stronger!

Show Notes
Co-Host and Co-Producer: Lisa
Co-Host and Co-Producer: Kellie

Special Thanks
Ann Cobb, Kelley Ogden, Martha

Music
Music courtesy of Melodie Music.
Melodie Music Subscription: Pro Plan, Lifetime

Title: Fighter; Composer: Christy Panchal
https://melod.ie/track-details/3300-fighter

Title: Tranquility Within Composer: Justin Fitzgerald
https://melod.ie/track-details/2474-tranquility-within

💎Discover more at https://diamonddefense.com/

Transcript

Kellie: Before we begin a quick content warning. This episode includes discussion of sexual assault and violence with mentions of survival strategies and evidence preservation. Listener discretion is advised. The information shared is for general awareness only, not legal or medical advice, and not a guarantee of safety or outcome. Throughout this episode, we may refer to the perpetrator as he or him for clarity. We acknowledge that anyone of any gender can commit acts of violence.

Theme Music: I am a fighter. Checking my armor. I'm marching onward. Hey Hey. I am a fighter, storming the desert…

Kellie: Welcome back to the Diamond Defense Podcast. I am Kellie.

Lisa: And I'm Lisa. Hey, Kellie. Great to see you again.

Kellie: Hey, girl. So, Lisa, in our last episode, we had a very compelling episode with Martha telling about, uh, an experience, a couple experiences that she's had, and there was so much information about how to stay safe related to what she went through.

Kellie: And listeners, go back and listen to that episode if you haven't. Um, that we wanted to have another episode where you could talk about active compliance, and I don't necessarily know what that means. I know what the words mean, but can you explain what active compliance is?

Lisa: Absolutely. Some of the things that she was using to keep herself safe. Those distraction techniques that she was using of talking to her attacker of asking questions, of asking for what she needed, uh, you know, sort of messing with their plan and, and trying to take a little bit of control over her situation. A lot of those things are also active compliance or fit into that category of active compliance.

Lisa: And so, what that is, is, um, if we. God forbid, find ourselves in a situation where we think that our survival could be compromised by resistance to an attacker, and we have to go into compliance in order to keep ourselves alive because that is the only thing that matters at the end of the day is our own… own survival.

Lisa: If we have to go into compliance, there is a way to do that that not only helps keep us safer during the attack scenario, but also really helps to catch the motherfucker after the fact. And so, you know, as we're going through Martha's story, I just thought this is another episode altogether. And so, why not honor, uh, her amazing, um, experiences by using them to highlight another really important aspect of self-defense.

Martha: He carried me into the living room, sort of pushed me into the living room, went through my purse, tried to put a coat over my head so I wouldn't see him, and I said, please don't. I have claustrophobia and I would freak out, which is kind of true. And I told him, I'm not wearing my contact lenses, so I wouldn't even know what you look like, and I promise not to look at you. Fortunately, he took my word, and he didn't put the coat over my head.

Lisa: What active compliance is, instead of blindly following along, when we are finding ourselves as in compliance, um, with an attacker, instead of just tuning out or going into panic or just going along with whatever they say, just hoping that eventually they'll let us go or we'll get out of there.

Lisa: Um, we do a series of things. We have some jobs to do during that experience. And so instead of just blindly following along, uh, we go into what I call active compliance. Um, I think that that is, um, really important to talk about before we continue to move forward and talk about resistance, because we're gonna talk about resistance all the time, all day long, we're always gonna talk about what we can do in order to resist an attack, the things we can do, the physical defense tactics, the, you know, the distraction techniques that all of the many things available to us to try and resist an attack. The unfortunate truth is that resistance is not gonna be right for every violent encounter, and there are gonna be times when we are gonna have to comply.

Lisa: Um. And so, in order to keep ourselves safer and catch that motherfucker, um, these are the series of things that we have to do.

Kellie: It sounds like there's not a formula for every given situation. We have to suss it out in the moment, and we won't know until the moment, but you're gonna give us tools that maybe help us either decide or what to do when we decide we have to either comply and then resist.

Lisa: That's exactly right. Yeah. As always, we tune into our instincts. We see what they are telling us to do in any given moment, and if they are telling us that resistance would compromise our own safety, would compromise our survival, that's when we go into active compliance.

Kellie: Okay.

Lisa: So, the decision to resist can only be made by the victim at the time of the attack, right?

Lisa: We can't decide for ourselves now whether or not we would resist an attack, nor can anyone else decide for us. Uh, until there is a moment of attack, and that is the moment in which we tune into our instincts, and we decide whether we're gonna resist or comply. Now, sometimes we go back and forth between the things.

Lisa: Sometimes it may seem, um, like we have it, uh, something that we can use, that we can use to resist. And so maybe we do that, and it doesn't work. And so, we have to go into compliance. And then if we're tuning in and we're doing our active compliance, maybe we notice something in an opportunity to try and resist again or try and escape or what have you. And then we go into resistance again, you know? And so, we can go back and forth between compliance and resistance.

Kellie: So, with compliance, does that mean we're doing what the person is telling us to do, or is it not rocking the boat metaphorically?

Lisa: Uh, it's kind of both. It basically means we are not actively resisting that attack.

Kellie: Gotcha.

Lisa: We are not physically defending ourselves. Um, so we may be doing what they're telling us to do, but we're not doing it blindly. Right. We're keeping our wits about us, so to speak. We're, we're working the alert system. It just seemed important to me before we go on and talk about resistance, um, that we've gotta address this part of things and typically this is the way I start my classes.

Lisa: So, when you take a class with Diamond Defense, the very first thing that we talk about is active compliance, because we're gonna spend many hours talking about resistance, talking about tactics and techniques, um, specifically physical resistance or non-lethal weapons or what have you. So, to me, it's very important to start here and talk about the worst-case scenario. Talk about the ugly stuff that we don't wanna acknowledge that we don't wanna think we would ever have to be in this situation to have to use this stuff, but damn it, if we are and we have this knowledge. It could save our lives, and it could catch the attacker. We're gonna talk about what active compliance looks like, um, how it can keep us safe, how it can help catch the attacker, and then we don't spend forever and a day talking about resistance again.

Kellie: Resist the motherfuckers.

Lisa: That's right. That's right. Most of the time, sometimes we can't. So.

Kellie: You, you said something about an alert system. Is it like a beep beep kind of, you know–

Lisa: I wish. Yeah. No.

Kellie: Security system that we have on our person that we activate.

Lisa: So, ALERT is, uh, it's a mnemonic, so each letter stands for a different job that we have when we are in active compliance.

Lisa: So, I'll just go through what each letter stands for and then we'll go about and talk about each one of those things. Okay. So, the A is for Alive, we have to stay alive, right? That's the first and most important job that we have. L is for Learn because we have to learn things about our circumstance and about our attacker.

Lisa: E is for Engage and this is where Martha shown, um, in her stories, in her experiences, um, really engaging with the circumstance when we're able and engaging with the attacker. Uh, R is for Remain because we have to make sure that a trace of us remains where we have been. And then T is for take because we need to make sure that there's proof that that attacker was with us. And so, we need to take something of them with us.

Kellie: So, scratch their eyes out, scratch their skin, pull their hair out.

Lisa: Yes.

Kellie: Leave chunks of their flesh in my mouth as I'm clawing their brains out.

Lisa: Yes, yes. And yes.

Kellie: Okay. Got it.

Lisa: Absolutely. Yeah. It's very, very valid. Um, all right. So, let's talk about the A, the Alive.

Lisa: And so, the ways that we have, the tools that we have in our belt to be able to keep ourselves from going into panic. Because panic is a killer, right? Once we go into panic, um, are breath shallows our thinking gets muddy. Um, we can't focus, and if we can't breathe and think and focus, then we don't stand a good chance of getting out of this situation.

Lisa: So, we have to do all of those things. So, um, first thing is to focus on your breath. Now there's a breathing pattern that I think we probably a lot of us use. It's just, it helps reset the limbic system. I use this kind of, whenever I'm like, in a deep-stress situation, I just do this and it, and it does help calm, but it's basically making your exhales twice as long as your inhales. It's like everybody does this breath pattern, but I think it's important to put it in this place and say, this is where it can help as well. So, if you feel yourself going at a panic or even just deeply stressed. Take several breaths, making those exhales twice as long as your inhales and a four eight, uh, breathing pattern tends to be nice.

Lisa: So, if we can inhale for four counts and exhale for eight counts, basically what that does is it decreases the amount of carbon dioxide in our lungs, uh, and it helps reset your limbic system, which is where all of your emotions are housed, right?

Kellie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: Um, so it, it calms the body. That's the first thing that we can do is tune into our breath, make sure we're breathing, get that exhale twice as long as that inhale for at least several breaths so that we can calm ourselves and be able to focus into the present moment.

Kellie: And it might be, I think, smart if you don't actively do any kind of meditation or breathing exercises already, just to incorporate those every day, just so you know how to get to it quickly in a stressful situation. Right?

Lisa: Absolutely. If you just do. I dunno, three to five breaths like that. Even just five breaths like that. It's very calming. We can do that in any of our day-to-day stressful circumstances so that our body's familiar and, and that it's there and that it's accessible to us if we ever get into a terrible situation where we have to use it, um, it feels more natural.

Kellie: So, I love it. Just biology and breathing is going to help keep us alive so we can keep breathing.

Lisa: Yeah. Yes, exactly. Keep breathing so that you can keep breathing. Yeah. So, staying alive. Um, part of that is giving your brain something to do, something to focus on. Right? That helps keep us out of panic as well. And so that's where the next four points come in. Um, these are jobs that we have to do. Um, and so, uh, if we can tune our brain into having this work to do, having these jobs to do, uh, it really, really helps keep us out of panic. It helps keep us thinking and, um, it just increases our chances of survival. So, number two, which is Learn. So, it's really, really important to learn everything you can about your circumstance and your attacker should you have to go into active compliance. And the reason for this is that you are gathering information that can be used A to aid your escape potentially, um, or your release, uh, and B and super importantly, to catch the attacker after the fact. So, in terms of learning, in terms of gathering information, um, engaging all six of your senses is the way to do that. So, in terms of your senses engaging, your sight sense, what do you see?

Lisa: And I am talking about everything from your attacker to your environment. So, if we're looking at your attacker. What does his hair look like? What color is his hair? What is the style of his hair? What color are his eyes? What is the shape of his nose? Does he have any facial hair? Does he have earrings?

Lisa: Does he have any marks or moles or ink? What do his clothes look like? What is the condition of his clothes? What kind of shoes is he wearing? What do his hands look like? That is one of the ways Martha used active compliance to catch her attacker afterwards, was that she paid attention to his hands.

Martha: When I went to go to the deposition, um, there he was sitting, and they asked me to identify him, and I had not seen his face when he was there that night, but I knew his build in his basic, you know, I'd seen his hands.

Lisa: What does he look like from top to bottom? Everything you can observe about this person, observe it and lock it in your memory. And then your environment, especially if we are talking about a secondary location situation where you have been removed from where you were found. Keep your eyes on everything around you. What do you see in terms of businesses, schools, construction, people, animals, all of it. All of it can help the police determine where you were.

Kellie: And on the off chance that say you're taken hypothetically and they immediately blindfold you, at least being aware of where you are at all times that you can catalog that site before you lose it is helpful, I'm sure.

Lisa: Absolutely. And if that's the case, then we go to number two sense, which is hearing, right. So, if, God forbid, you end up blindfolded. You've got to double, triple, turn on your hearing sense. Okay, so turning to hearing him, what does he sound like? If you were to have to do a voice idea of this person, could you do it?

Lisa: Are you paying attention to his voice and the tenor of his voice and his speaking pattern? What does the environment around you sound like? Especially if you're blindfolded. Do you hear school children? Do you hear construction? You know, all of these things can tell you something about the neighborhood that you're in.

Lisa: Is there, do you hear traffic sounds? Do you, you know, just really tuning on, tuning in to what you're hearing around you. And again, locking that in your memory. Right? Going to smell. What – I know this one is weird – what does he smell like? Does he smell like baby powder or gasoline? Those are gonna tell you different things about a person, what he does for a living, where he lives.

Lisa: Um, there are a million different scents of people, so get his scent in your nose and remember it and remember what that smells like. If you're in a secondary location and you're blindfolded, what do you smell around you? Do you smell asphalt? Do you smell freshly baking bread? You are in a, um, like inside a secondary location, like a home or an apartment or a structure, what does it smell like in that structure? Tune into your smell sense and lock it. Now, this one is weird. Taste, if you have an opportunity to bite this motherfucker. What does he taste like?

Kellie: Piss! Piss and vinegar. Piss and evil. He tastes like Satan. I'm just gonna say it. Presay it. That's what he tastes like probably.

Lisa: That's great. And I think that if that were the case and you were to lock that into your memory bank, um, and tell that to P Police, they may not know exactly what to look for, but it's definitely an understanding of who this person was.
Lisa: Right?

Kellie: But no, I get it. If they taste salty, if they, you know, they're a smoker and you taste nicotine, I mean, there's 1,000,001 things.

Lisa: Right. That's exactly right. Do they taste sweet? You know, um, what, whatever it is, use that sense and lock it in.

Kellie: Are you trying to tell me though, in a court of law that he tasted like Satan might not hold up?

Lisa: I don't know that it would hold up, but it would feel really good to say.

Kellie: Yeah.

Lisa: So, I think you would say that and, and other things feel.

Kellie: Mmmm.

Lisa: Touch, um, what does his skin feel like? Is it soft? Is it rough? Are his hands calloused? Are they smooth? Does he have little hair on his arms or legs? Does he have a lot of hair on his arms or legs or wherever else? What does his hair feel like? You know, any of these things in, especially in um, if you're in like a vehicle, too.

Lisa: What, what does everything feel like? Um, and specifically what does he feel like? And I recently read a, a case study about a woman who was able to ID her attacker because she felt his hands and she felt these very specific calluses, um, that he had on his hands because of the work that he did. And then lastly, our sixth sense.

Lisa: What sense do you get? What does your sixth sense, your intuition tell you about this person if you tune into it? Does it tell you anything about who he is, about what maybe he does for a living, about what he wants and why he wants it? Tuning into our intuition as opposed to, and it's, and you can't do this when you're in panic. 'Cause you can't think clearly enough. So, you keep yourself out of panic and you can tune into that intuition, it will tell you things about him. It's the same reason. It's the same thing with our instincts, right? Our bodies pick up so much more information than we can consciously process, and you tune into that intuition, and it may tell you things that you weren't able to consciously process about him.

Lisa: What he does for a living, what type of person he is, what he wants or is seeking out of this scenario. What sense do you get about your attacker and about your environment? You gotta notice all those things. This is a lot of jobs to do and just the, just the second point here. But you gotta notice all those things and being present really helps.

Lisa: Like I said, we can't do this when we're in panic and we're more likely to remember things when we are in a present state of mind.

Kellie: It reminds me, the sixth sense. You know, sometimes when you know I've been on dates and we talk about my dates and the sense of keeping safe in the next episode, so tune in for that. But on some of those occasions, many of them, just the way they talk about women or their jobs or what made them mad, the syntax they use can kind of give you clues as to what's important to them, what triggers them.

Lisa: Absolutely.

Kellie: So, all these senses, this is the part of engaging with the whole situation, the person and environment, right?

Lisa: Well, that's, no, that's learn.

Kellie: Oh, that's learn. Learn. Okay.

Lisa: So, so let's go into Engage. So, um, engaging is, is really based on your own instincts and intuition about when you can do that. And if we remember Martha's story, you know, she talks about how there were times when she engaged and then there was a time when she didn't.

Martha: I kept telling him, “Can you please leave?” And I asked him, “You know, did you see my cat? Is he okay?” And he, you know, kept telling me to, “Shut up.” And so finally I figured I didn't wanna make him any mad, so I finally kind of shut up.
Lisa: Engaging with the attacker if you feel it safe to do so. Things like talking to them calmly, telling them what your name is, you know, asking what their name is.

Lisa: My name is Lisa. What's your name? Um, asking them what they need, uh, making requests, and that's what Martha did a lot. Offering fawning. So fawning is one of the new Fs. They keep adding.

Kellie: The new Fs, like the new.

Lisa: In, in a responsive way. Sowe always talk about fight or flight.

Kellie: Okay.

Lisa: Right. The fight or flight instinct, which one of those two things are you?

Lisa: Are you gonna fight? Are you gonna flee? Well, they've added a couple other Fs, so now we have fight, flight, freeze.

Kellie: Freeze as in like–

Lisa: Freeze as in like you freeze up during a, during a experience, a scenario, an attack. You, you freeze. And we hear about this all the time. I have so many students who have sat in my class and said, I just froze up.

Kellie: Gotcha.

Lisa: I wish I'd been able to do something. Why? Why wasn't I able to, you know, to, to yell or to resist or what have you. I just froze up. And I always say to those students, that's what your body told you to do to keep yourself safe, and you are alive and sitting in my class right now, which means you did the right thing.

Lisa: So, freeze is a new F. And then the fourth F that they've just recently added is Fawn basically giving your attack or reason to believe that you think well of them.

Kellie: Fucking assholes. It makes me so mad that that can be an effective tactic because they want that in some ways, and it pisses me off that I have to give something to someone just to stay safe, but I get it.

Lisa: But yeah, girl, you're keeping yourself alive if you're doing that. So, if you have to tell a motherfucker like, you're so sexy. I really enjoyed what just happened, can we go out again so that he will drop you off at your home as opposed to kill you. Then that's what we have to do. If your instincts are telling you that he would respond to that and that it might put you in a more favorable position, 100%.

Lisa: All of these things can shift your circumstance, right? So when we engage, when we lean in, um, when we're able to, to talk to them, to ask them the questions, to make the request to, if appropriate, offering, finding to doing all those things, what we are doing is we are taking more control, we're taking a little bit more control of that situation, and we're letting things, um, hopefully align for us in the way that we want them to. Moving on to number four, which is Remain.

Kellie: Remain.

Lisa: We have to make sure that there is a piece of us, a part of us, something of us that remains wherever we were, were whether we were taken there, whether it's whether the violence was visited upon us. Whatever it is, we have to make sure that there's proof that we were there, okay.

Kellie: We're getting into the CSI kind of part of this, the forensics shit.

Lisa: Remain the, the last two remain in take are all about forensics. Absolutely.

Kellie: I am down for this. Give us, give us all the deets on the science and how we can catch these motherfuckers.

Lisa: You've seen it all I'm sure, through CSI, through SVU through every other crime show that there is physical proof, right? You wanna make sure that there's physical proof that you were where you were. Um, and a great way to do this is, uh, through number one: hair. Pulling your hair out from the roots. Just a few strands of hair from the roots and tucking it into his pockets, uh, between seat cushions in a couch, wherever it is.

Lisa: Um, if you can pull some of your hair out from the roots, just give a good yank 'cause fuck it. Uh, and get that into, on his person or in the area where you were. Um, that's a great source of DNA.

Kellie: Is hair the easiest? Does spit last long on a person?

Lisa: Yeah. And that's number two, saliva.

Kellie: Oh, how did I even know this? I feel like I'm acing this part of the test.

Lisa: You are, you are. Like I said, a lot of this is stuff we absolutely know, you know, from every crime show or documentary we've ever watched, but, um, it's good to talk about so, so saliva, so spit anywhere and everywhere. Seriously. On him, on his clothing, on his, uh, in his car, on his belongings.

Lisa: Whatever you can spit on, whatever you can get your saliva on, get it on. You know, this includes if you can, for instance, if you end up biting him or you can bite seat cushions, whatever it is. Um, if you're biting something, your saliva's gonna be on it. Your DNA is gonna be there.

Kellie: Okay. And if for, sadly, scarily enough, if blood has been drawn, then leave your blood as much as possible anywhere.

Lisa: Kellie. What do you think point number three is?

Kellie: Stop it! Is it blood?

Lisa: It's blood.

Kellie: Oh, my God.

Lisa: Absolutely.

Kellie: I'm doing so good at this.

Lisa: You are, you're acing the quiz you didn't even know you were gonna have. Um, so moving on to number three, blood, if you are bleeding in any way, make sure that your blood gets on his clothing, his skin, his belongings, your environment. But even if it's just a tiny little cut, um, smear it, you know, smear that blood on him, make sure you smear it on his clothes, smear it on the cushions, wherever you can dig that blood into, dig it in there, okay? Because, uh, there's no better source of DNA than that. Then, uh, do you know what number four is?

Kellie: Oh, no. I don't know. I could guess, could it be? I don't know. Your inner dragon is rising up, and you scorch them with your inner dragon fire.

Lisa: That would be fantastic. God, wouldn't that be great if we had that?

Kellie: It's not inner dragon fire.

Lisa: It's not in our dragon fire, but it is fingerprints, fingernails, and skin cells.

Kellie: Touch the shit out of everything.

Lisa: Touch the shit out of everything. Touch every single thing that you can get your fingerprints on and your skin cells on. Um, bite your fingernails and leave them. You can bite your fingernail off and make sure that that sheds in your environment. Um, touching, touching his shoes if they are leather will capture fingerprints, touching, um, a belt.

Lisa: Um, any of that stuff if he has any hard objects on him at all that will capture fingerprints, touch every single thing that you possibly can to get those fingerprints on there. Get the skin cells. So, Touch DNA is sort of a new-ish thing, but Touch DNA is really sensitive, and it will pick up skin cells off of places that you just touched.

Lisa: Even if you can't get a fingerprint to a place, even if it's you know, the back of your hand or a knee or whatever, um, if you can shed skin cells that will pick it up. Scratch your arm or your leg, you're gonna shed skin cells and that's a great source of DNA. So, fingerprints, fingernails, and skin cells.

Kellie: Okay.

Lisa: And then lastly for Remain, uh, is personal items. So, if you have any personal items that you can leave behind on you, leave them behind and do it as inconspicuously as possible. You know, tuck them under, underneath clothes or underneath seats or shelves or in cushions or things like that where he might not readily notice or recognize that it's something that you have left, um, but that it will remain there when you have long escaped and you're telling the police, "Hey, you know, I pulled off my rubber band from my hair and I tucked it into his seat cushion in his car."

Kellie: Smart. Leave behind a trace. It's like a Hansel and Gretel. Hansel and Gretel kind of.

Lisa: Yeah. Leave your breadcrumbs. Yeah, absolutely. And then lastly is Take. So, we want to ensure also that there's proof that the attacker was there with you, so you wanna take something of him with you. Okay? So, if you have an opportunity to pull his hair out from the roots, if you can get a grip on that, and you can then tuck that into your own clothing, into your socks, into your shoes, whatever you can, so that it stays with you when you leave.

Lisa: Um, notice if his saliva touches your body or belongings and preserve it.

Kellie: How do you do… how do you preserve it? Like, not wash it?

Lisa: Yeah, that's exactly right. So, um, you know, if you notice that he, there's some spittle that drips on your hand when you are out of there. Don't go to the bathroom and wash your hands, go straight to the police and have them do a swab.

Kellie: So, I'm gonna bring up something that I, you know, I've seen in procedural shows and stuff like this, and maybe trigger warning here. So, if you are raped, if you are sexually assaulted, I've heard sometimes victims feel like the need to clean themselves right away because they just wanna wash it off. As hard as that is to do, don't do that right, because you wanna preserve.

Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. You, it fucking sucks. Like the only thing that a victim wants to do after that experience is take a shower, right? You wanna wash him the fuck off of you and you shouldn't and you can't if you want him caught. Yeah, you've gotta preserve everything, go immediately to the police or the hospital, um, and have a rape kit done as soon as possible.

Lisa: And they'll do all that. And then you can say to them, Hey, uh, you know, he's… he, his saliva got on my hand right here in this spot. You're gonna, you're gonna wanna swap that. Same thing in terms of blood, if. He happens to bleed for any reason. If you're able to scratch him or he gets cut or something happens to where he is bleeding, make sure his blood gets on you, on your skin, on your clothes, on your belongings, what have you.

Lisa: Make sure you get some of his blood on you. And same thing again with fingerprints, fingernails, skin cells. If you can make sure that you are noting where and what he touches, what he's getting his fingerprints on.

Martha: And he saw those photos and he went, "Ah." And I said, "Yeah, nobody's opened that package in probably eight years since they were developed." And he went, "That's great." So, he dusted all of those and that's where he got the fingerprints that got that guy arrested.

Lisa: Um, and if you can scratch him to get some of his skin cells under your fingernails, great. And then lastly for Take, um, take from him whatever you can get away with in terms of personal items, no matter how small. If there's a coin that you see him drop or anything in the environment, anything on him that you can sneak onto yourself, into your pocket, into your hand, what have you that you can take with you to prove that this guy is who he is. Like I said, even a coin can have skin cells on it. Take that with you.

Kellie: This whole alert system, the five letters that you've just talked about and all the components within that, does that weave in and out through active compliance and resistance like the whole time you're doing the alert system, whether it's complying or resisting?

Lisa: That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there were certainly portions of Martha's story that could fall under compliance and resistance, both. Um, she went back and forth, uh, at different times. And so, this alert system really is, you know, obviously it's for active compliance, should we find ourself in that situation.

Lisa: But if you find yourself in that situation and then you see an opportunity to try and resist again, um, do that as well. And then. If that works great. You're out of there and you have all this wonderful information and things, and you've left your DNA, and you've taken his, and you've observed everything about the environment, and you have instincts about who he is and what he wanted, um, great. Then you walk away with all of that information. Resistance, compliance, they're not permanent states. They… they may not be permanent states, so, trust your instincts go back and forth as you need to. Like I said, the only fucking thing that matters is your survival.

Kellie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa: So, whatever you gotta do in that moment to ensure that is what you gotta do.

Kellie: So, it just sounds like no matter what we're doing, where we are, we have to be really aware and present of our surroundings.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Kellie: Within danger and outside of danger. Just always being present and aware.

Lisa: Absolutely. Always being present, always being aware, always noticing things and those sorts of things keep your brain active, keep you looking at things, keep you paying attention to things, keep you aware of things so that if anything goes down, at least you've got that. At least you've, you've got your awareness about you, and you know, if it doesn't, then you just pick up the new interesting thing that you've learned about your walk.

Kellie: Stay present. Active listen, active see.

Lisa: Stay out of panic, stay out of your head. Listen.

Kellie: So, to recap, ALERT stands for, let me see if I can pass this test and remember. Alert is Alive.

Lisa: Yes.

Kellie: Learn.

Lisa: Yes.

Kellie: Engage.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Kellie: Remain and Take.

Lisa: That's right.

Kellie: We use that in the absence of an Inner Dragon Fire device. We can use those along with, you know, grounding ourselves with a breathing exercise, which I advocate that you practice just now in your daily life 'cause you'll just feel more serene anyways. Um, but these will help us get through a situation hopefully.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, like I said, not only will it hopefully help you, um, escape or um, successfully survive that situation, it will help him get caught.

Kellie: Motherfucker.

Lisa: Right? Which is not only important to you, but it's important to the public at large.

Lisa: It's important to the next lady that he might treasure it with, you know? So, we want him caught, not just because we want him caught because of what he did to us. But so that he can't do it to anybody else.

Kellie: You are such a good teacher. And speaking of teaching, I've taken a self-defense class from you. That's what you do. Tell us about what you do with Diamond Defense.

Lisa: I teach holistic self-defense, so that's why we start here with active compliance, right? So, we talk about risk reduction is the first course, and this is the first part of the first course. Um. Risk reduction, all the ways that we can keep ourselves from being targeted for attack in the first place.

Lisa: Um, because best case scenario, we never have to use physical defense. We never have to use a non-lethal weapon. We can just keep ourselves outta danger. But then for the times where the unthinkable happens and we end up in a situation where we have to defend ourselves, I also teach physical defense techniques, and we're gonna do an episode on that as well.

Lisa: We're gonna talk about the weapons and the targets of the body and how to get a weapon into a target and what that looks like in a real-time scenario and what your options might be for that. So, I… I teach physical defense as well. And then lastly, um, so the risk reduction is part of a sort of a three-part, three-tier, um, self-defense system.

Lisa: Uh, the first is prevent, right? So, the risk reduction is part of the prevent curriculum. And then the second is defend. And the defend curriculum is all physical defense, whether it's distance defense, where you've got like one to three feet of distance between you and your attacker. Or it's close-quarters defense where there's less than one foot of distance between you.

Lisa: Um. Then the third tier is protect. So, we have prevent, defend, and protect. And the protect tier is all about non-lethal weapons, right? So pepper spray, pepper gel, um, defense sprays, stun guns, stun batons, personal alarms, Kubatons, all of those non-lethal defense weapons, um, that can help keep you safe.

Lisa: And, um. You know, the thing that I enjoy about the non-lethal defense weapons is that they're non-lethal, right? So, I had a student, um, not too long ago. I love her. She is one of my favorite people on Earth, and we were looking at getting her a stun gun. She was looking at stun guns, trying to decide what she wanted, and we, you know, she picked one out that she liked. And so, it was great when we were looking at it, and I was sort of teaching her the ins and outs of it. And she pulls out of her purse a giant knife.

Kellie: Oh my.

Lisa: And she says, “My son got this for me to help me stay safe.” And I went, “Have you ever used a knife in defense? Do you have any tactics training? Do you have any skills that would allow you to be able to use that knife in a way that will keep you alive?”

Lisa: And she said, “No.” And I said, “How confident are you that if you were to pull that out, it would not be taken away from you and used against you?” And she said, “Not at all.” And I said, “Then get it outta your purse.”

Kellie: Yeah.

Lisa: Right. If you are carrying a stun gun or a pepper spray and somebody turns around and is, is able for some reason to take that from you and to use it against you, it will not kill you.

Lisa: It's non-lethal, right? So, it will incapacitate them. If they use it against you, it would certainly incapacitate you for a time, but it's not gonna kill you. And then on the, you know, on the other side of that, when you're using it against someone else, you don't have to be in a situation where you feel like, where you've taken a life.

Lisa: Sometimes certain attacks may feel like they warrant that. But that's something that sits on our conscious for the rest of our lives, and I just think it's important to think about that. And so, yeah. So, prevent, defend, protect, the three tiers of self-defense.

Kellie: So, we talk a lot about– we've talked a lot about that on this podcast. We're gonna keep talking about it, but you really, I think taking a self-defense class in person is one of the best ways to get it into your body, to feel it, to go through the motions, and you offer this you've got your own space now that you teach classes at.

Lisa: Yeah, I'm excited to have the studio now. I've been teaching nomadically for 20 years, and by nomadically I just mean I go on location. I, I go into, you know, offices, um, restaurants, people's homes, schools, gymnasiums, what have you. Um, and I teach classes on location and, um, now I've got my own studio. Um, so I get to teach out of there, you know, it's, uh, really, really, really important to get into that space if you have the opportunity to get into any sort of defense space. Um, so I'm gonna do it, we're gonna do an episode about that at some point soon where I'm gonna talk about self-defense training, what that looks like, what the ins and outs are of that, all the different options for it. What might suit you best, how we might find those resources. But like you said. You'll be able to get it into your body. Um, there is no substitute for learning physical defense techniques and feeling what that feels like in your body when you do that and then doing that over and over and over again until you build that muscle memory.

Lisa: You know, it's like I always tell my students, you can't, it's just like sports or playing an instrument, right? You can't, you can't walk out onto the court and shoot a three pointer if you've never practiced shooting three pointers and you can't pick up a, you know, a guitar and play a guitar with mastery if you've never practiced the guitar.

Lisa: You got to build your muscle memory. Your body has to understand what it feels like to do those techniques, to employ those tactics, and it has to understand what it feels like to do that over and over and over again. So that, should the worst ever happen, should… should you ever be in a position where you have to use it, you don't have to think about it as much. Your body knows what to do and how to do it, and it takes over for you.

Kellie: You're a really good teacher. So, if you are in the area, you know, go to our show notes and look up Diamond Defense and learn more about it if you're in the area where we're at. But if you're not, just do a Google search for self-defense classes in your area.

Lisa: Do a Google search. Talk to people, talk to your ladies. Get on in there in those conversations and say, Hey. I really wanna take a self-defense class. Anybody else know of any place we can do that. Anybody else interested in doing that? But if you happen to be in the Sacramento area, feel free to hop over to diamonddefense.com.

Kellie: You know, make a party out of it. Have a bachelorette party or, I don't know, a graduation party.

Lisa: I just did a graduation party. Um, we had a, a group of ladies who were graduating high school, uh, they'd been going to school together forever, since they were in like elementary school, and they're all about to go off to different colleges. And so, one of the moms, God bless her, she's amazing. She found me and she booked me to come in and teach a special private class for them.

Kellie: That's such a great idea. I love that.

Lisa: It was so much fun, and I think they got so much out of it. Um, and we were all better for it. Yeah.

Kellie: One of the things I love is that you hear so many stories in your self-defense classes and speaking of stories, listeners, we wanna hear your stories, so please reach out to us if you have a self-defense story that you wanna share, that you think is important to share? You can do it anonymously, too. We can have somebody read your story.

Lisa: Yeah.

Kellie: Um, but we would love to share that story because the more we tell our truths and share information, the stronger and smarter and safer we can be.

Lisa: Absolutely. So, anybody who's been listening, you kinda, if you're inspired to share a story you think might help other people stay safe or some tactic that you've used, or even something that you thought, you know what, I didn't, I didn't do maybe the exact right thing. I wanna tell this story so that other people can learn from me and, um, you know, do something different. It's all valid and it all matters, and, um, we all learn from it. So, if that's the case, feel free to hop over again to the website, diamonddefense.com, go to the podcast page. There's a whole setup there. Just scroll down. There's a whole setup there where you can share your story. You can, you can share anything with us, feedback on the podcast, what have you. Um, feel free to hop over there and, uh, let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Kellie: Um, and speaking of sharing, we really want you to share this podcast. Please share it, like, subscribe wherever you're listening so we can get the word out. We are passionate about keeping you safe and sharing your stories. And we also want you to watch out for motherfuckers.

Lisa: And shine on, Diamonds.

Theme Music: I am a fighter. Checking my armor. I'm marching onward. Hey Hey. I am a fighter, storming the desert…

Kellie: If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline for confidential support at 800-656-HOPE that's 800-656-4673. You can also visit RAINN.org. That's R A I N N dot ORG.