Local courses help empower women

WASILLA — Women don’t need to be third-degree black belts to feel confident in their abilities to protect themselves physically.

At the Alaska Center for the Martial Arts (ACMA) off Bogard Road on Aug. 9 and 10, Mark and Debbie Passmore of Perpetual Fitness and Women’s Self-Defense LLC taught a two-day, hands-on course to a handful of women on how to escape situations of sexual assault or threat. The training is offered quarterly, the Passmores said.

“Time after time, girls will be all quiet at the beginning of the course, then they practice the scenarios and they’re a little awkward, but then they start to get into it and they’re yelling and laughing and saying ‘ooh, I want to try this one!’” Debbie Passmore said.

Over the weekend, course participants went through a series of 20 scenarios that real women have faced in which they are threatened with sexual assault. First the instructors demonstrated on each other, then the women paired up and practiced being both “the bad guy” and the victim. For the last hour of the four-hour class each day, the women tested their new knowledge and skill at full strength on a guy in a padded suit.

While the padding enables and empowers women to let loose, it also means that the attacker isn’t going to let up as easily.

“A bad guy won’t stop if he doesn’t feel something that will scare him off,” Mark said. “(This method) really brings in the reality of it.”

Mark said that he can still feel the pressure of the hits through the suit, so he knows whether or not the women are using enough power to deter a fully grown man from pursuing her any further. If she isn’t, he keeps coming.

Laurel Toso, who trains at the martial arts center and attended the class recently, agreed that the role-playing is important but can still be scary.

“It’s kind of intimidating but it’s the closest thing to real life that you’re going to get,” she said.

The Passmores are certified to teach women’s self-defense classes “Girls on Guard” level one and two through Defend University in New York, and they are required to renew their certification every two years.

Both are certified in self-defense, but the couple was quick to emphasize that although Mark has a first-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do — among other accomplishments in the martial arts — Debbie is just passionate about empowering women.

“I’m a mom,” she stated simply as her biggest reason for teaching self-defense.

Debbie doesn’t want to be a martial artist, but protecting herself and teaching others how to do so is important to her. Many other women, she said, also are focused more on survival skills than being trained in an art that requires more technical skill.

In the instructors’ experiences, other self-defense courses typically just “water down” martial arts moves, which Mark said is not very effective.

“When you’re in the moment and the fear factor is way up there, you’re not going to remember the technical aspects,” he said.

In contrast, gross motor skills are easy to remember and easy to use, Mark said, citing raw leg strength as the most powerful and useful bodily tool a woman has in defending herself.

Jessica Wilson, an ACMA employee with three different black belts explained in detail and with good humor.

“Women are built from the waist down,” she said, “so using your legs to throw people across the room is always fun.”

Despite being a martial artist herself, Wilson also said that less technical instruction does make self-defense more straightforward and still useful.

“It is so simple,” she said. “I don’t have to know my foot goes here and my knee goes here, (just) strike, make sound, get to the ground.”

Jessica’s mother Diane, co-owner of ACMA, said — like Debbie Passmore — concern for her daughter’s safety led her to get involved with martial arts and self-defense. After seeing and hearing about sexual assault attacks while they lived in Detroit, Michigan, Wilson said her family knew self-defense was something to be taken seriously.

Logan Thornton, the other co-owner of the ACMA, is just as serious about women’s self-defense. Thornton usually delivers the lecture portion of the course, which was derived from personal research. The lecture is divided into two roughly two-hour segments over the course of the weekend and contains information that Thornton said took many months to compile, and includes sources such as the national Bureau of Justice, University of Alaska Anchorage Department of Justice studies, recent psychological studies and the book “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker.

“There’s a much greater awareness (of violence toward women) now compared to last year,” Thornton said.

Still, the violence continues, and some are still in the dark.

“Basically every guy knows women who have been attacked or assaulted, but a lot of them don’t know it,” Thornton said. “I do.”

According to a survey conducted by the University of Alaska Justice Center last year, more than 50 percent of women in the Mat-Su Valley have suffered sexual assault, intimate partner violence or both, but that percentage still might not reflect all the facts.

“The survey excluded non-English speaking women, women without phone access, and women not living in a residence,” reads one section of the survey results. “Estimates may be higher among women excluded from the survey. Estimates may also be conservative because of the continuing stigma of reporting victimization. This survey measured the number of victims, not the number of victimizations.”

Nationally, 10 percent to 30 percent of the time the attacker is a stranger, and elevators in non-commercial buildings are notorious as target locations for potential rapists, Thornton said during the lecture.

If you ever wondered why so many women go to the bathroom in pairs or groups, according to one of Thornton’s female friends, it’s because they’re afraid of being raped.

Still, it’s not hard to make oneself “an unappealing target,” Thornton said.

“We teach this course to provide learning and empowerment to women, not to scare them,” he said.

To get involved with martial arts or enroll in a self-defense course, call the Alaska Center for Martial Arts at 376-9966 or Perpetual Fitness at 373-7148.

For a closer look at university studies regarding sexual violence in Alaska, visit justice.uaa.alaska.edu.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.