The very, very sad case of Brooke Wilberger has reached a conclusion of sorts with the killer’s guilty plea, which included him finally telling authorities where he had left the body of the 19-year-old woman he’d kidnapped, raped and murdered in May 2004.
But it’s unlikely anyone around here will ever really get over what happened. How can you? Someone is minding her own business, nabbed by the worst kind of monster humanity has to offer, abused, killed and then dumped. You don’t just turn the page from that.
At this writing, my daughter is the same age as the victim was at the time of her death five years ago. She’s getting a lot better in this regard, but like a lot of young people she tends to be somewhat cavalier regarding how dangerous the world can be. So, over these last five years, I’ve many times cautioned her to take every precaution by reminding her about Brooke Wilberger’s disappearance.
I’ve also repeatedly told her that, without becoming paranoid, she should periodically run through dangerous scenarios in her head in preparation for the awful and admittedly unlikely event that something such as an abduction attempt were to happen.
I tell her to be ready to yell, punch, kick, scratch, eye-gouge, pick up a stick and use it as a club, whatever you can possibly do. Never, ever, let someone shove you in a car and drive you somewhere. Force the issue right away. Even if you end up getting knifed or shot, it’s better to have that happen in the middle of town than being taken away to some secluded spot, where your chances of survival seem to decrease exponentially.
This is not to say Brooke Wilberger did not try to do all of those same things; for all I know, she did, and even if she didn’t, I am in no way finding fault. She is, it goes without saying, blameless.
But like I tell my daughter, I urge all of you readers, especially the female ones, to be ever careful and ever ready to fight, immediately. You just never know when you’re going to need to, and preparation might make the difference between living and dying.
5 comments
brmfalk says:
Sep 22, 2009
This was really good to read, Steve. I don't comment usually on anyone's but Jennifer's blogs, but this one caught my eye. Does your daughter take this kind of talk in good grace? I know that I never did, really, when my own mother used to try to warn me, and neither do my own "children" who are of course, adults by now. I hate that we have to accomodate the world of the sick lunatics in this way.
stevelundeberg says:
Sep 22, 2009
Hello. Thanks for commenting. I don't know that my daughter takes my advice/warnings as seriously as I'd like her to, but I do think she takes them a lot more seriously than she once did. Either way, all I can do is put my thoughts out there, and then pray. What she does with my advice is obviously up to her.
dainsma says:
Sep 22, 2009
I think it's because my neighborhood in San Diego is the worst I've ever lived in regarding drunks/crazy people/suspicious types, but for the first time in my life I feel like I have to worry about this kind of thing, especially when jogging. If I have to jog in the dark a.m. hours I am a little paranoid and keep my swiss army knife in my jogging belt, just in case.
As far as the kids, just keep talking about it, even as they roll their eyes so far in their heads you think they just might snap.
jennifermoody says:
Sep 23, 2009
And this is why my mother loves it that you walk me to my car, Steve.
meremark says:
Sep 26, 2009
Y'know, I have a few thoughts from reading this, Steve — which is very good IMO — and these thoughts start at some connection point in your 'sharing' and then go off at various tangents.
For instance, there was an incident not long ago when two girls were killed 'on their way home' from the place where my daughter would have been (and perhaps accompanied them walking) except that I interceded and told her she couldn't go there … because I 'had a feeling' of a 'disturbance in the force' that night.
Second, sorta related: I 'feel' the ambient 'vibrations' around me, where I go, what I'm aware of. It is just some 'sense' I can't explain and I've always felt; being attuned to it has carried me into danger and safely out in the nick of time during more events than I can count. I believe everyone has such a 'sense' to some extent — animals seem to have it, so primal it is — and there is scant or no presentation, discussion, or 'training' of it in our culture, (where cursory illusion out-ranks substantive merit). In my advice to my daughter (and son) growing up, I emphasized 'training' their sense of trouble in the wind, stirring a 'hunch,' an untoward or inappropriate 'behavioral tic' and such prescience as provides for judge of character and to form those judgments and act on them and yet remain aware to revise and update judgment with new understanding, and so on, much MORE than I tried to 'train' her responses for all the different sorts of close situations or dangers there are to encounter. The best remedy for trouble is prevention or pre-emption, not 'practice at it.'
There's more connected with all you said, Steve. But … forefend.