Predators go where there is prey, and for a pedophile the children’s class of a martial arts studio is rich with targets.
Martial artists seem reluctant to talk about the monsters in their midst for fear of the public painting everyone that teaches with the same brush applicable to only a very small minority. Yet I would say the number of martial arts teachers that molest their students is probably a lot greater than public school teachers, while not being as treacherous as trying to get your kid an acting job in Hollywood.
We need to talk more about this problem and inform the public about the dangers.
When I say pedophiles, there really are two types. One can’t be aroused by anything other than a child, typically around 8 or so. Thankfully they are rare. More common are those that can date adults, but somehow find 13 year olds an easier target. This is the big danger in martial arts.
A few months back, I was wearing my dojo t-shirt to the bank and the clerk talked to me about maybe teaching his kids. I declined since I don’t have a kids class, but a while later I went back and warned him of the dangers he was facing.
If you send your kid to a class, do not make it one that teaches out of a house, basement, garage or park. I have a contempt for 99 percent of the commercial dojos out there, but the one near me has a staff of both men and females instead of a single instructor like me. You don’t want your kids to be in a situation where they can be alone with an adult. Commercial dojos most often have more than one adult instructor around at any time. The same for classes out of community centers. You want a lot of adults to be in the area at all times.
You have to understand the particular danger in martial arts regarding pedophiles. While any place that has interactions with 16 year olds might lead to them hooking up with an adult to date, the situation in martial arts and instruction is unique.
First of all, a lot of people seem to get into martial arts to make up for a lack of being what I call a real man. To be blunt, they are kind of losers. You won’t find many students like this, because the guys I talk about tend to jump straight to being masters of some sort. They lie about their qualifications, or take quick video courses, so they can jump straight to being teachers.
And of course they are trying to compensate for their lack of being a man. They give themselves fancy titles, make up stories about fighting in secrete death matches, wear a lot of patches meant to impress the typical person and strut around like they are god’s gift to humanity. All this need to impress others comes from an inner need to prove their masculinity, which really doesn’t exist.
And of course, these types are far more likely to prey on kids because they can’t handle real women and need to feel like a man.
Real heavy hitters I know don’t try to impress others like this. They know what they are and feel no need to make anyone else respect them for their lethality. To the contrary, most of them make efforts to not attract attention and appear to be nothing to set off any alarms in other people.
Let me give an example of a guy that I have talked about in my blogs- Ralph Hall. Hall failed army basic training. He wasn’t tough enough to make it through. So he reinvented himself as not only an elite ranger, but as a tenth dan black belt in my system of Bujinkan. His only real training in it was through a video home study course put out by a guy named Richard Van Donk and when interviewed he was only able to show his membership card for Van Donk’s organization, NOT the central dojo for the Bujinkan in Japan. Yet he claimed to have visited Japan and trained in secret with the head of the art. Yeah, he claimed that he trained in secret and that is why none of us that lived there had ever seen him.
He dressed up like Naruto characters and claimed to have fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, killing several enemy with his bare hands.
Try telling this type of story to a secure woman in her 20s and it probably would not go over well. But teenage girls aren’t as wise, knowledgeable and experienced as that. So he managed to attract several young students to him. One of his 13 year old students he ended up seducing. He went to jail for a while, moved to Nevada when he got out and seems to be right back to telling people his lies.
Ralph Hall exhibits a lot of the traits that should set off warning bells in people looking to put their kids in martial arts classes.
-Only one instructor. While things can happen even in public schools where there are many adults, the fewer the adults the greater the chances to work on seducing students.
-No real proof of his training and experiences. When you evaluate and instructor, you should have a chance to talk to someone else about their training. Any teacher that says he was taught, but can’t seem to put you in touch with their teacher, can be counted as a fraud. Like Hall, they may be able to show paperwork and be associated with a real organization, but in this day of computers, certificates and such can be easily reproduced. You need to talk to someone that will confirm that they know the teacher actually went to a class and learned.
Even I, who lived in Japan and had one of his teachers die, can point you to tons of people here in the states that can confirm that they saw me train for years in Japan. That is the type of proof you need. Otherwise you may fall for a predator with some faked papers and a fast story. It takes years to become a public school teacher, so that discourages pedophiles from trying. But as Ralph Hall proved, within days you can set yourself up as a martial arts teacher with a few good lies.
For some reason, ninjutsu seems to attract more than its fair share of frauds that molest kids. I think it is because the common perception of secrecy in the art allows people to explain away why they can never introduce people to their teachers or anyone else who can confirm they actually trained. And it might be the macho image that is the next warning sign.
-Too much attempts to appear macho. Ralph Hall failed army basic training. That says something. He wanted to be a really tough guy (at least in the minds of others) but lacked the inner strength to make it through. To compensate, he built up a huge image of himself as a blooded warrior and presented that to the world at every chance.
Take a look at the teacher’s Facebook page of advertisements. If they have pictures of themselves posing menacingly with firearms or doing nothing but snarl at the camera, walk away. They are probably trying to prove something to compensate for their real lack of masculinity. And that makes them a higher risk.
Even if you do all of the above, you must still be wary. Talk to your kids, watch their classes. Talk to others about the teacher. Too many people treat martial arts classes like daycare, dumping their kids for hours at a time with the teacher so they can do something else. Can you think of a more attractive situation for a pedophile?
Take the time to sit in on at least a few classes your kid goes to in order to understand the dynamics. If the studio has kids classes, but parents are forbidden to watch, that is an automatic danger signal and you should walk away.
You can never totally eliminate the danger from grown men who lust after 13 year old girls, but you can lessen it. Knowing what to look for is the first step. I hope I helped people see a little of the danger and what they should be wary of.