Comments

I think this is a wonderful thing. As a mother of teen girls, and a rape survivor, I think anything we can do to help our girls be safe and to empower them is wonderful.

Besides being the mother of four daughters and one son, I am a retired Crime Scene Investigator. I'm very aware of the crimes and devastation of sexual assault cases, kidnappings and murder. My 13 year old son is a 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo, a black belt in Ki Gum Do (Korean sword), and a black belt in Hwa Rang Do. My 12 year old twin daughters are 2nd degree black belts as well. However, I still fear that they would "panic" if confronted with an abduction situation. I found this video to be a fantastic tool to reinforce all they have been taught. Congratulations! Keep up the great work. If this saves just one person's life, it's worth it's weight in gold. You should be very proud of yourselves!

Hi Girls,

I saw you on Montel this morning and wanted to tell you how awesome I think you are for doing an awareness video for not only teens but anyone. I am a mother of four children three boys and one girl. I would love to have a dvd to teach them how to protect themselves. I also plan to take the dvd to the local schools and see if I can get them on board with your mission to protect people from predators. Keep up the good!

I took self-defense classes for over 2 years and I am now an instructor. I told all of the women I have taught about your website and what you have been doing for the world. I'm so grateful that there are people like you that let girls know that they have the right to be treated with respect and to defend themselves when necessary.

I work for Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth of Marquette County, Wisconsin as the Montello Prevention Coordinator. One aspect of my job is running a junior high and high school group that focuses on educating about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and giving the kids better things to do than using substances. I am working on bringing a Date Rape Awareness week to the high school in the spring and when I heard about this dvd I had to have it!!! In college I was a victim of 2 separate rapes. The first rape was an aquaintance rape and the second was a stranger rape. My life has changed forever, both of the rapes happened when I was 21 within 5 weeks of each other (I am only 22 now so the memories are very vivid), but this job gives me an outlet that will allow my pain to possibly prevent future women from going through what I went through and am still going through. I thank you very much for making this dvd, more than you could ever know!

Teaching girls that they CAN defend themselves

I am interested in becoming a certified trainer for Just Yell Fire. I gained my Master's degree in Library Science last May with an emphasis in children's and youth services, and hope to find a job soon as a public librarian. With the amount of contact I will have in that field with young and teenage girls, as well as contacts with schools and other libraries, I would like to find out how to become involved and help promote your program.

I have been training in aikido as a self-defense art since June, and will be testing for my first rank soon. The more I learned in aikido, the more it made me aware of how girls and women in America are socialized about violence. Movies, television, and popular media seem to promote the belief that girls and women cannot win or escape in a situation where we are under attack by a man. Recognizing this made me interested in finding out what programs were already available to promote girls' and women's self-defense. I discovered Just Yell Fire by Googling "women's self-defense". I was thrilled to find that someone has begun a movement to counter that socialization early in women's lives, beginning with teaching the girls who are most at risk that they CAN defend themselves and escape an attacker, even if their attacker is much larger. I myself am only 5'1", and the techniques that eliminate an attacker's advantage of greater height are also especially applicable to me.

I live in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, and I would like any information available on training for certification for Just Yell Fire, either locally or in neighboring states if necessary. Many thanks to you, Dallas, and everyone else involved with Just Yell Fire for your caring and hard work.

I am a police officer and self defense instructor. My students are mainly college age. I think this will be a good training aid. Thank You

I am a junior at Gettysburg College in PA. I don't know if you have been watching the news lately, but there has been a murder on our college campus last Thursday. One student (a male senior) strangled and murdered his (ex-)girlfriend of one year (a sophomore). It really shook our campus hard, along with myself, even though i did not know either one that was involved. After breaking down a little tonight, i realized, crying was not going to change the past; nor prevent incidents, assaults, nor murders like this from happening again in the future.
What will? Taking action!
I found your contact information after googling 'self defense for women classes' and wanted to get in contact with you right away. I was hoping you could hold self defense classes for female students, or any woman (faculty, staff or students) on our campus to help protect us if we were to ever get ourselves in this type of situation. It is very scary to know that an innocent 19 year old young woman was strangled, stabbed and murdered by someone that loved her for a year. Not even a stranger, or a crazy drug addict rapist on the street! Her boyfriend! Someone she trusted and loved! How scary is that? She was not able to get away, she was not able to defend herself. She died because of that.
But you... you have the power to give us woman that power. You have the ability to give us woman the ability to defend ourselves. To win. To live. And to help with our recovery of her death on our campus. I believe that immediately holding these self defense classes on our campus will prove that Emily Rachel Silverstein did not die in vain.
Please help me, help us. Give us the power, the ability to defend ourselves and live.

Katherine and Dallas, I am very proud of the effort you have made to make all of this a reality.

I can't begin to tell you how relieved I am to see that our youth are concerned about this topic. I am a troop leader for Girl Scouts of the Rio Grande, in El PAso, Texas, and a detention officer for El Paso County Juvenile Probation Department. I currently run the Studio 2B Program ( Girl Scouts) which is a program designed by girls for girls at the Juvenile Probation Department. It appears that our youth are fed up with abuse and rape. One of the focus series books is called "Take Charge" and it is about rape and abuse. In the book it also recommends to "yell fire" for the same reasons you described. Your video , along with my group will be most helpful and impactful. I will definately forward your link to Girl Scouts of the Rio Grande.