Women's Safety USA

If You Have a Daughter, Please Read This ☝️

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I've been a detective for 16 years, and I found out predators are using your children's SCHOOL PICTURES to pick their next victim. This year, they picked my own 13 year old. If there's a daughter or a granddaughter in your life who sits for picture day, please read this before the next one. My name is Rebecca. I've been a police detective in Dallas, Texas for 16 years. It's a city of more than a million people. But I've worked the same neighborhoods the whole time, and I know most of the kids by their first names, and most of their moms from the Target checkout line. When a kid on my side of the city doesn't come home, I'm one of the people they call. I've brought 63 kids home. Every one of them came home alive. None of them came home the same. One girl is 17 now, and she still sleeps on her mom's bedroom floor. One boy was the best pitcher in his league, and now he won't leave his house. When a kid goes missing, the first thing a parent hands me is a picture. It's almost always the school picture. The blue background. The little smile the photographer asked for. Last school year, I had six of them on my desk. One night, after everybody else went home, I laid them out in a row. A 7 year old boy. A 16 year old girl. Two sisters, 11 and 14. Kids from four different schools. Every one of them had sat for picture day that year. Every one of them was gone before the year was over. The year before that, it was different kids, and it went the same way. New kids every year. Any age. I didn't understand it until I brought a girl named Hailey home. Hailey was 14. She'd been gone five weeks. She talked to me for two hours at the station, and she was brave about all of it. Then she saw her own school picture on my desk, in the pile with the others, and she stopped talking. She pointed at it. "He had that one." I asked her who. "The man. He had that picture on his phone. Before he ever talked to me." That picture goes through a lot of hands. The photographer. The company that prints it. The yearbook. The school's computer, with her birthday and her address right next to her face. Somebody besides the parents and the photographer gets to see those pictures. And somebody picks. A few weeks after picture day, a man gets close to the kid they picked. Inside the school. Never the same job. A coach. A substitute. A bus driver. A counselor. He asks her how things are at home. Then he waits for a fight with a parent. After the fight, he tells her how smart she is, and how much better her life would be without her parents. Then he offers her somewhere to go. I took all of it to my lieutenant. He said, "Rebecca, kids run away. Then they make up a story so they don't get in trouble." I took it to the picture company. A lawyer called me back. And this year, they picked Lily. You need to know who Lily is. She's 13, in 8th grade, and she's a cop's kid. Every year I stand up in school gyms all over this city and give the same safety talk. Yell. Run. Don't get in the car. Find a trusted grown-up at school. Lily has heard that talk more times than anybody alive. In 4th grade she raised her hand in front of 300 kids and told me I forgot a rule. "You forgot 'bite.'" The whole gym laughed. That's Lily. She knows every rule, and she'll tell you when you skip one. She has a phone so she can always reach me. She's 13, so she can't carry pepper spray to school. And she has a SheSafe on her backpack strap, because I clipped it there the week I brought Hailey home. Hailey told me she tried to yell for the lady at the motel front desk, and nothing came out. I didn't have a word for that yet. I just knew I didn't want Lily to need her voice. Lily's picture day was the second week of school. I fixed her hair in the car that morning, and I paid for the big package, with the wallet sizes for her grandma. I wasn't the only one who wanted her to look good. Three weeks later, a new counselor started at her school. Mr. Dale. He came from an agency. The school told me later his background check was clean. He would pull Lily out of class to check in. He let her eat lunch in his office when the cafeteria got too loud. Lily liked him. She said he was the only grown-up at school who actually listened. The very first time he talked to her, he said, "Your mom works a lot, huh?" She hadn't told him that. She figured somebody else had. Everybody at her school knows what I do. That one's on me. I'm the one who stands up in that gym every year and tells kids to find a trusted grown-up at school. Then we had the fight. I missed her band concert. Her first solo. I was across town, holding somebody else's kid's school picture, knocking on doors. I can't be there for everybody at the same time. That night I picked somebody else's kid. I got home at 11. Lily was sitting on the stairs, still in her concert clothes. She said, "You care more about other people's kids than me." Then she went to her room and shut the door, and I let her. The next morning, she told Mr. Dale about it. He said, "Until things cool down at home, I can drive you after school. You shouldn't be sitting by yourself." He told her to meet him at the gas station by the school at 3:15. His car would be there. She thought that made sense. Staff aren't supposed to give kids rides out of the school lot. Everybody knows that. She didn't tell me. We weren't really talking. This is what Lily told me later, and what the camera over the pumps showed. She walked to the gas station at 3:10 and bought a cherry slushie while she waited. At 3:15, a dark blue van pulled in and parked at the side, by the air pump. Mr. Dale got out of the passenger side. Another man stayed behind the wheel. Lily had never seen him before. He didn't look at her. He watched the store. Mr. Dale slid the side door open and smiled. "Hey, kiddo. Hop in. We'll get you some dinner." She asked who the other man was. "My buddy. He's driving. Come on, we're running late." He stepped around her, so he was between her and the store. He put one hand on the door frame of the van. He was right there, and he hadn't touched her. And my daughter, the kid who corrected me in front of 300 kids, could not make a sound. She tried to say no. There was nothing there. Her legs wouldn't move. Her phone was in her hand. She tried to unlock it, and she got her passcode wrong three times. But her other hand was already around the SheSafe on her backpack strap. Her fist closed. She yanked the two halves apart and threw it as hard as she could. It bounced off the pump island and slid under the ice freezer by the door. It kept going. It doesn't stop until the two halves touch again, and Lily still had the other half in her fist. It goes off as loud as an ambulance siren, with a white flashlight strobe. Under that ice freezer, it lit up the whole front of the store. A man filling up a pickup with a ladder on the roof let go of the pump handle. A woman getting a baby out of a car seat stopped with the door half open. The cashier came to the glass door with the store phone already at her ear. A teenager at pump 3 held up his phone and started filming. Mr. Dale looked at the man with the ladder. Then he looked at the cashier. Then he got back in the van. The side door slid shut, and they pulled out onto the service road. Not fast. They just left. Nobody walked over. The man with the ladder stayed by his truck. The teenager kept filming. Then Lily's legs came back. She walked inside and stood next to the cashier. Now, where was I? I was in my car outside a house across town, with another kid's school picture on my lap. My radio said, "Attempted abduction, the gas station on the service road. Juvenile female, 13. Purple backpack." Lily has a purple backpack. I don't remember the drive. My partner, Ray, says I did it in 11 minutes. When we got there, the cashier was holding Lily's alarm in a paper towel. It was still going. She said, "I can't make it stop." Lily took it from her and pushed the two halves together, and it stopped. There was a cherry slushie melting on the ground by the air pump. Ray called the agency that sent Mr. Dale. His last school had a note in his file. A mom said he'd driven her daughter home without asking her first. Nobody called anybody. Ray went to his apartment that night. It was empty. He'd cleared out. Except for one thing, left on the kitchen counter. A printed page of school pictures. Lily's whole grade. The picture company's logo in the corner. Lily's face had a little check mark next to it, in blue pen. So did two others. Mr. Dale had worked at two other schools in three years. At the first one, a mom pulled her daughter out of his office after a week, because she didn't like how often he called her down to his office. That girl is fine. At the second one, there's a girl whose school picture has been on my wall for 14 months. Blue background. I'm not going to say any more about her. That night, I sat across from my own daughter at our kitchen table. Ray sat at the end. And I did what I do with every kid I bring home. I asked her questions. Slow. Not mean. "Why do you think he asked about home the first time he met you?" She shrugged. "He was being nice." He was looking for a crack. "Why do you think he already knew I work late?" "I don't know. Everybody knows." Because my name was on the picture day envelope she brought home. Her grade, my name, my cell, our address. And my name has been on the news every time a kid in this part of the city went missing. "Why do you think he offered you the ride the morning after our fight?" Lily looked at the table. Because a kid who just screamed at her mom doesn't call her mom. She doesn't tell her mom where she's going. He waited for that. "And why the gas station? Why not the school lot?" Because the school lot has cameras and a vice principal with a whistle. At a gas station, a kid getting into a van looks like a kid getting a ride. Everybody's looking at the pump. He needs it quiet. He needs nobody looking up. He was never afraid of her. He was afraid of being seen. Then Lily said the thing almost every kid I've brought home has said to me. "I knew all the rules, Mom. I'm a cop's kid. And I just stood there." Every one of them has told me some version of that. "I couldn't yell." "My legs wouldn't go." For years, I wrote it in my report and moved on. A few months after Hailey, at a training, I learned it has a name. Tonic immobility. It's a reflex. It's what an animal does when its body decides there's no way out. It goes completely still. It isn't fear, and it isn't weakness. The body just does it, and it never asks her first. There's a study. 298 women, seen within a month of what happened to them. 7 out of 10 went completely still. 7 out of 10. And it isn't about age. I've seen it in a 20 year old college student and in a 45 year old mom. The body goes in order. I've watched it in every kid I've sat across from. Her eyes stop focusing on anything close to her face. That's why Lily couldn't get her own passcode right. Her hearing goes narrow. Lily said she couldn't hear the cars on the service road anymore, just him. She can't hang on to one thought until the end of it. So every rule she ever heard in that gym isn't in her head when she reaches for it. And the voice goes first. Talking about what you would or should do doesn't always transfer to real life. Not when he's standing right in front of you. A kid who freezes blames herself more than anybody. Every kid I've brought home did. Hailey asked me if she was going to jail. I said, "Lily. Look at me. None of this is on you. Not the freezing. And if you'd never pulled it, that wouldn't be on you either." I have stood in gyms all over this city and told kids to yell, run, kick, bite and make a scene. It isn't a plan. It's just something grown-ups say, and every kid finds out the same way Lily did. Every single thing I ever taught my daughter, and every kid in this city, is a thing the body takes off them in the first two seconds. She's not allowed pepper spray. Her phone needed a passcode, and her voice went first. What does any of that ask a kid to do with hands that don't work? Then Lily asked me the one thing she couldn't figure out. "If I froze, how did I pull it?" "Because the hand closes," I said. "That's the one thing that doesn't go." Gripping is the oldest thing a person has. A baby does it the day she's born. The day Lily was born, she grabbed the nurse's thumb so hard the nurse laughed. It doesn't need her fingers to work. It doesn't need her eyes, or her voice. Lily nodded. "I couldn't say no. I could do that." Then I asked her one more thing, the way I'd ask any kid. "What came first? The noise, or your legs?" "It got so loud," she said. "And then I could move." I write down the order things happen in for a living. She said it in that order. I didn't lead her. Ray picked up the alarm. "Where'd you get this one?" "SheSafe. Online." He nodded. "Good. I've logged the cheap ones into evidence. Dead batteries. One snapped in half in a girl's hand." "I'm getting this one for my girls." Then Ray said, "Well. You were right." I asked him, about what. He looked at the page of school pictures sitting on the table. "About all of it." I almost didn't buy it, by the way. I'm a cop. I thought my kid had the best training in the city. I bought it the week I brought Hailey home, mostly so I could sleep. Lily had one thing to say about it. "If this goes off in band, I'm moving in with Grandma." It doesn't go off unless you pull the two halves apart with your whole fist. A bump can't do it. It rode on that backpack for weeks, shoved in her locker and dragged down the bus aisle, and it never made a sound until the day she needed it. Lily slept on the floor of my room for nine nights. She went back to school. The new counselor is a woman. Lily still won't go in her office. And picture day still comes to every school in this city. I can't stop it. My lieutenant read Ray's report and said it proves one man had one page. I know you may not believe me either. You have no reason to. A few weeks later, I stopped for gas at that same station, with Lily in the car. A man at the next pump said, "Hey, kiddo," and took a step toward us. Lily's hand was already closed around her strap. She stepped behind me. He wanted to tell me my gas cap was open. I never told her to do that. At lunch, her friends Ella and Grace asked about it. Then their moms called me, because their girls told them whose mom had bought it. I ordered for both of them that night, and one for my mom. And now every kid I bring home leaves the station with one on their backpack. I buy those myself. And I want you to know what kind of neighborhood this is. Sidewalks. Crossing guards. A Target five minutes away. The gas station by the school is where every 8th grader buys a slushie after the bell. I never thought it would be my kid, at that gas station, with a man pumping gas 20 feet away. If you're reading this, maybe you're me, before picture day. Maybe you think a school picture is just a picture. So did I. I bought the big package with the wallet sizes. Maybe you think the school checks everybody. They checked him. Maybe you told her to find a trusted grown-up at school. I've told every kid in this city that. He was the trusted grown-up. Maybe you told her to yell. I've told thousands of kids to yell. My own daughter's voice was the first thing to go. Maybe you're her grandmother, and her school picture is on your fridge. Somebody else has a copy. Lily and the girl on my wall both sat for picture day. Only one of them had something on her backpack strap. It clips onto a backpack strap or a set of keys. It goes off as loud as an ambulance siren, with a white flashlight strobe. It isn't a weapon, so her school doesn't mind it, and there's nothing on it anyone could use against her. I don't work for them. I'd lose my badge if I did. I'm writing this as Lily's mom, because I can't say it in a gym. This is where I got ours. 👉 https://www.tryshesafe.com/pages/momreport-v1 Rebecca, Lily's mom P.S. The early Black Friday deal was on when I ordered, and 3 free gifts came with it. One SheSafe is on Lily's backpack. Ella and Grace each have one, and so does my mom. I printed the family safety plan and taped it inside our pantry door. P.P.S. There's a 365-day money-back guarantee. A whole year. The picture company has had my daughter's face since kindergarten and never once asked me who gets to see it. P.P.P.S. When I ordered for the kids at the station, they were almost sold out. If this page still loads, I'd order tonight. P.P.P.P.S. School lets out close to dark now. If your kid walks to a gas station or a friend's car after school, she's standing somewhere a van can pull up. P.P.P.P.P.S. I've driven a lot of kids home. I've also knocked on doors with nothing to bring home. So tonight, tell her about the freeze. Tell her 7 out of 10 go completely still, that it isn't a choice, and that it will never once be her fault. Then find the picture day envelope and read it the way a stranger would. And send this to every parent you know. 👉 https://www.tryshesafe.com/pages/momreport-v1