Women's Safety USA

If You Have a Daughter, Please Read This ☝️

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There's a new trick predators are using at college parties, and it's not in the drink. If you have a daughter or a granddaughter away at school, please read this all the way to the end. Then send it to her. My name is Tracy. My daughter Megan is 19. She's a sophomore at a state school five hours from our house. You need to know what kind of girl Megan is, or none of this makes sense. Megan is the mom friend. In high school she was the one holding everybody's phone while they danced. She made a group chat called "Who's Driving" and nobody was allowed to leave it. At school she's the same. She counts heads before they leave a party. She counts again before they go home. She also knows every rule. I made sure of that. Never take a drink from a guy. Never put your cup down. If you put it down, it's gone, get a new one. Never walk home alone. Never leave without your girls. She can say them faster than I can. A few Saturdays ago she almost stayed in. She had a Bio exam on Monday. I'm the one who told her to go. "You're 19, honey. You blink and it's over. Go have fun with your girls." So she went to a house party off campus with her two roommates, Jess and Priya. A big old house on Elm Street that a bunch of juniors rent. She texted me at 10:40. "At the party. Jess and Priya are here. Love you." I checked her location at 11:30. There was the dot, sitting on the house on Elm Street. Right where she said. I went to bed. This is the part she told me later, in pieces. When they walked up to the house there was a dark gray car parked past the porch. Engine running, a guy sitting in the driver's seat. Megan figured it was somebody's Uber. There was a guy there who was nice to her all night. Not creepy nice. Normal nice. Brown beanie, flannel, maybe 22. He never tried to dance with her. He never offered her a drink. When a guy from the lacrosse team got too close to Priya, he was the one who said, "Dude, back off." Megan said he was the only guy there who didn't want anything. He was also the only guy there without a cup in his hand. Megan liked that. She figured he was somebody's ride. Around midnight she told him she was done drinking. She'd had two beers that she opened herself. He said, "Smart. Hold on." He came back from the kitchen with a bottle of water. He'd already cracked the cap for her. She thought that was sweet. Think about that for a second. I spent two years telling my daughter to watch her drink. I never once said a word about water. Nobody does. About 20 minutes later she couldn't stand up straight. She said the room started tipping, like she was on a boat. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth. She tried to text Jess and she couldn't get her fingers to hit the right letters. She didn't tell anybody. I asked her why, later. She said, "Mom, I'm the one who takes care of everybody. I didn't want to be the drunk one." That's on me. I'm the one who told her, you're the responsible one. Don't be the girl somebody has to carry home. The nice guy found her leaning on the wall by the stairs. He said, "Hey. Your roommates went outside. Come on, I'll take you to them." And Megan, who counts heads, wanted to find her girls. So she went with him. He didn't grab her. He walked beside her, out the front door, across the porch, down the steps. "This way. They're right over here." Jess and Priya were not outside. They were in the kitchen the whole time. The gray car was still parked past the porch. A dark gray Altima. The engine was still running. The back door was open now. The same guy was sitting in the driver's seat. Megan said she looked at that open door and something in her stomach dropped. The nice guy stepped in close behind her. "Here, I got you. Just sit down." She tried to say no. It came out as nothing. She tried to step back and her legs wouldn't do it. Megan walks everyone home. That night she could not walk. But her keys were on a lanyard around her wrist, the way they always are, because she's always the one who drives. And on that lanyard was the SheSafe I put in her care package before she went back for sophomore year. She grabbed it and pulled the two halves apart. If you've never heard one up close, it's as loud as an ambulance siren. And there's a white flashlight strobe that goes off with it. She said it lit up the inside of that car like daylight. About 20 kids were standing on the porch. Every one of them turned around. A girl on the steps screamed, "What are you doing with her?" A guy came off the porch with his phone up, filming. The nice guy put both hands up and said, "She's fine, she's just drunk." Then he got in the back seat, shut the door, and the car pulled away. Not fast. It just left. Jess heard the noise from the kitchen and came running out the front door. She found Megan sitting on the curb, holding her wrist against her chest, with the alarm still going. Her fist was still wrapped around her keys. I was asleep. My phone rang at 1:14 in the morning. It was Jess's number. I don't think I've ever been that awake that fast. Jess was crying. Then Megan got on and she sounded like somebody had turned her voice down. She kept saying, "I'm okay, Mom. I'm okay. I don't know what happened." I think about that call all the time. Because there's another call I could have gotten. Jess, at 9 in the morning, asking if I'd heard from Megan. Because Megan never came home. I drove five hours in the dark. I don't remember most of it. I remember one thing. I almost didn't put it in that box. I bought it at the last minute, and I almost took it back out, because I didn't want her to think I was being dramatic. For five hours I kept seeing that box without it. The granola bars. The fuzzy socks. The Chipotle gift card. And nothing on her lanyard but her keys. I got to the hospital a little after 7. Megan was in a bed with a blanket pulled up to her chin. The lanyard was still wrapped around her wrist. The nurse said she wouldn't let them take it off. I stood in the doorway and looked at it. That little thing on her wrist was the only reason I was standing in a hospital and not in a police station. The hospital ran her blood. They found something in it that she never took. Jess went back to the house that morning to look for the water bottle. It was gone. The whole kitchen had been cleaned up. The next day a detective came to the girls' apartment. Detective Kim. She sat at their little kitchen table, the one with the wobbly leg, with her notebook. The kid on the porch had sent her his video. You could read the plate on the Altima. She said the plate went with two other reports near campus that same semester. Two other parties. Same nice guy. Same thing every time. A bottle of water, with the cap already open. I asked her about the other two girls. She said the first one's roommate saw her walking out the front door and pulled her back inside. I asked her about the second one. Detective Kim closed her notebook. "She went home with them," she said. "Her case is still open." That's all she would say about the girl. I asked her if the school knew. She said the school had both reports. The first one since September. Megan pulled up her school email right there at the table and found what they did with it. One email to every student. "Reminder: Staying Safe at Off-Campus Parties." Watch your drink. Never leave without your friends. Nothing about water. Nothing about a gray Altima. Nothing about a nice guy in a brown beanie. They knew about two girls before mine, and that's what they sent. And they never sent the parents anything. I get an email from that school every time the dining hall changes its hours. I never got this one. Then she said one more thing. "I sat with her mother. At a table a lot like this one." "She asked me what she could have done." "I didn't have anything to tell her." I looked at the lanyard on Megan's wrist and I couldn't breathe. Then she told us why Megan was the one sitting at that table. She said, "Ask yourself why he never bought her a drink. Ask yourself why he was the nice one all night." Because that's his whole job. They work in pairs. One is the nice guy. The other one waits in the car. She said every girl at that school has heard "watch your drink" a hundred times. So he doesn't touch the drink. He brings her water, because nobody tells her to watch her water. "And ask yourself why he walked her outside." Because inside that house there were 60 people. He can't do anything with 60 people looking. At the curb at 1 in the morning, there's nobody. She said Megan couldn't have fought two grown men. She didn't need to. "The second that porch turned around, he was done," she said. "That's why he left. Nobody had to stop him." Then I said the thing that had been going around in my head the whole drive up. She keeps saying she couldn't say no. She keeps saying it. Megan is the loudest person in every room she walks into. She says she opened her mouth and nothing came out. And Detective Kim said, "They never can." I said what. "They never can. That's the part nobody tells anybody." I asked if it was whatever was in the water. She said, "The water made her dizzy. It didn't take her voice. I've sat with girls who had nothing but a coffee that night, and the voice goes the exact same way the second a man is right on top of them." Then she said, "Do you want the actual answer, or do you want me to be nice about it?" I said the actual answer. She said there is a name for it. Tonic immobility. It is a reflex. It is what an animal does once its body has decided it cannot get away. It goes completely still. It is not fear and it is not weakness and it is not a decision. The body does it and it does not ask her first. She said there is a study. 298 women, seen at a clinic within a month of what happened to them. 7 out of 10 of them went completely still and could not move. 7 out of 10. "Grown women," she said. "Sober. Not one of them chose it." "And the ones who freeze blame themselves the hardest. That's the cruel part. The one bit nobody chooses is the bit they can't forgive." I thought about Megan in that hospital bed. "I'm the one who takes care of everybody." Then she told me why it happens. "Once the heart rate goes past a certain point you lose fine motor control. Anything that needs fingertips. A cap. A small button. A phone screen." That's why Megan couldn't get her passcode right. She tried four times. I bought her that phone so she could always reach me, and it asked her for the one thing her hands couldn't do. "Her eyes stop focusing on anything close to her face. Her hearing goes narrow. She can't hold a thought long enough to finish it, so whatever plan she's had in her head since she was little, yell, run, find your friends, none of it is in there when she goes looking for it." "And the voice goes first. That's the one nobody believes until it happens to them." I sat at that wobbly little table and I couldn't say anything either. Every single thing I ever taught my daughter to do is a thing her body takes off her in the first two seconds. If I'd taken it out of that box, that's all she would have had. Her voice. Her phone. Her rules. I said, so what am I supposed to give her. And Detective Kim said, "Everything I do happens after. I'm the after. I've been the after for 14 years." "There's one thing I've watched actually work, and it isn't her fighting anybody. It's other people looking." "He was never afraid of her. Everything he did all night was about not being seen. That's why it's the curb at 1 in the morning and not the kitchen at midnight." Then she went through the rest of it fast, like she'd said it a hundred times. "Pepper spray. She's not allowed to have it in her dorm. And if she did, she'd have to find it, aim it and press a little button with fingers that can't hit a letter on her phone." "Her phone. You saw how that went. And you were five hours away." "And the little keyring alarms, which is what most people buy. Go look at one. The pin hangs off the side on a little loop. So when he grabs for her, he's got the alarm and the off switch in the same hand. That isn't a safety device. That's a noise he can switch off." Then she looked down at the lanyard on the table and said, "Is that a SheSafe?" I said yes. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. "This is the only one I've seen do the job." "It isn't a button. She doesn't press it, she pulls it. A button asks a fingertip to find one exact small thing. This asks for a fist." "And she doesn't hold onto it. She pulls it and throws it as far as she can and she goes the other way. He can pick it up, stomp on it, kick it into the street, and it does not stop. The two halves have to touch each other again, and she's got the other one." "There is no off switch anywhere he can reach." And I said, but she froze. She couldn't even move her legs. How did she do anything at all. And Detective Kim said, "Because the hand closes. That's the one thing that doesn't go." Gripping is the oldest thing a person has. A baby does it the day it is born, before it can hold its own head up. It doesn't need her fingers working, or her eyes focusing, or her voice coming back. Then she said the part I wasn't ready for. "Two things go off at the same second, and they're aimed at two different people. The light is aimed at everybody else. The siren is aimed at her." "A body can't ignore a noise like that coming out of its own hand. It brings her back before it does anything to him. Ask her which happened first." I asked Megan that night. She said the noise came, and then her legs came back, and she sat down on the curb. She said it in that order without me telling her to. Right at the end, Detective Kim said, "Whoever put that on her lanyard did the only thing anybody can actually do." And I had to tell her it was me. That I stuck it in a care package with granola bars and fuzzy socks and a Chipotle gift card. And that I almost took it back out. She didn't laugh. She said, "The other girl's mother would give anything for that box." Then she said, "Well. You were right." Megan FaceTimed me when the box came and held it up to the camera. "What is this thing?" I told her it was for walking to her car. She said, "If this thing screams in a lecture, I'm dropping out." I told her the truth. It won't go off unless she pulls it apart. It never once went off in her bag. Not in class, not at the gym, not in the bottom of her purse. She put it on her lanyard so I'd stop asking. Megan came home with me for a week after that night. She slept in her old room with the door open. Then she said she was going back. I didn't want her to. She went anyway. A few weeks later Jess had a birthday party at a house a few streets over from Elm. Megan went. She brought her own water. A sealed bottle from her own fridge, in her own bag. She had her lanyard around her wrist. Around 1, a guy she didn't know said, "You heading out? Want me to walk you to your car?" She told me her hand was already closed around her keys before she even thought about it. She said, "No thanks. My roommates are walking me." And they did. Same kind of party. Same kind of guy. The only thing different was her. Jess and Priya both have one now. So do two girls on Megan's floor. I sent their moms the link myself. I'm writing this for the mom I was before that Saturday. If you told her to go out and have fun, so did I. I'm the one who sent her. If you told her to watch her drink, so did I. It wasn't in the drink. If she never leaves without her friends, mine went outside to find hers. If you told her to scream if anything ever happened, so did I. Her voice was the first thing to go. If you can see her location, so could I. The dot showed me the house on Elm Street. It didn't show me the car at the curb. If she'd call you, Megan tried. She couldn't get her passcode right. If you think the school would warn you, mine knew about two girls before Megan. They sent her one email about her drink. Two girls walked out the same front door with the same nice guy. Two moms got a call. One of us drove to a hospital. The other one drove to a police station. The only difference was a thing I almost took out of a box because I didn't want to look dramatic. If you've been meaning to get her one, I was you three weeks before that Saturday. Please don't wait to find out which mom you are. I don't work for them. I'm just Megan's mom, and I was asleep five hours away when it happened. I couldn't sit on this. This is where I got hers. 👉 https://www.tryshesafe.com/pages/momreport-v1 Tracy, Megan's mom P.S. They had a deal on when I ordered, and they put 3 free gifts in the box. One alarm went on Megan's lanyard and one went to Jess. I ordered more for Priya and her little sister. P.P.S. There's a 365-day money-back guarantee. A whole year. Her school won't give back a dime of what I paid for her parking pass. P.P.P.S. They were almost sold out when I ordered the second batch. If this page still loads, I'd grab them now. P.P.P.P.S. Every weekend she's at school is a weekend with a party. If your girl goes out on weekends, drives herself home at night, or lives off campus, she's going to be at a house like the one on Elm Street. P.P.P.P.P.S. Detective Kim said one more thing on her way out. "Everybody tells them to watch the drink, so that's the one place he never goes." And tell her about the freeze. Say it out loud tonight. Tell her 7 out of 10 women go completely still, that it is not a choice, and that it will never once be her fault. Then send her this. Tell her it's not in the drink. And send it to every mom you know with a girl away at school. 👉 https://www.tryshesafe.com/pages/momreport-v1