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 high school parties, and it's not in the drink. If you have a daughter or a granddaughter in high school, please read this all the way to the end. Then send it to her. My name is Tracy. My daughter Megan is 16. She's a junior, and she just got her license. You need to know what kind of girl Megan is, or none of this makes sense. Megan is the mom friend. In middle 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. She's still 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 got invited to a party at a senior's house on Elm Street. She almost didn't go. She never goes. I'm the one who told her to go. "You're 16 once, honey. Go have fun with your girls." So she went with her two best friends, Jess and Priya. His parents were home. His dad said hi to them at the door. She texted me at 10:40. "At the party. Jess and Priya are here. Love you." Her curfew is 12:30. I checked her location at 11:30. There was the dot, sitting on the house on Elm Street. Right where she said. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for her headlights. 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. Older than everybody there. 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 driving, so she was sticking to soda. She'd had one Diet Coke 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 everybody to think I was drunk." 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 friends 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 clipped on her keys the day she got her license. 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 on the couch. My phone rang at 12:14. 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 drove there in my slippers. It's ten minutes from our house. I don't remember any of it. I followed the ambulance to the hospital. 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. 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 our house. Detective Kim. She sat at our 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 in the county that same school year. Two other parties. High school 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 friend 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. I asked her if the school knew. She said the district was told after the first one. And again after the second. The district said it happened off school grounds, so it wasn't a school matter. I get a robocall from that school every time it snows. Nobody called about this. Then she told us why Megan was the one sitting at that table. She said, "Ask yourself what a 22 year old was doing at a high school party." Because nobody there knew him. And nobody there was going to ask. "Ask yourself why he never brought 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 in 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 past the porch, 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 all night. 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. 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 past the porch 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 at school. 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 asleep ten minutes 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 clipped it on her keys the day she got her license, next to the little flip-flop keychain from the beach. She didn't laugh. She said, "Well. You were right." I want to be honest about something. I almost didn't put it on her keys. I bought it at the last minute and almost returned it, because I didn't want her to think I was being dramatic. Megan held it up when I handed her the keys. "What is this thing?" I told her it was for walking to her car. She said, "If this thing screams in AP Chem, I'm moving 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 left it on her keys so I'd stop asking. Megan stayed home from school for a week after that night. She slept with her door open. Then she said she was going back to her life. I didn't want her to. She went anyway. A few weeks later a girl from her class 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 11, an older 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 friends 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 from Megan's lunch table. 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 call you, they call me about snow. They didn't call about this. Megan and the girl whose case is still open walked out the same front door with the same nice guy. One of them had something on her wrist. I don't work for them. I'm just Megan's mom, and I was asleep on my couch ten minutes 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 keys 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 there's a party at somebody's house. Even the ones where the parents are home. If your girl goes out on weekends or drives herself home at night, 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 in high school. 👉 https://www.tryshesafe.com/pages/momreport-v1