Defense Against an Armed Rapist

One of the most common “what if” questions people ask self-defense instructors is “what if the attacker has a weapon?” Part of the reason Jill asked us to return to Israel was for us to share the IMPACT Chicago approach to defense against an armed rapist with the IMPACT Israel instructor team. Two of the evening trainings in Israel were devoted to sharing our approach.

Two assumption underlying our program are that we are teaching defense against someone using a weapon to coerce “cooperation”/eliminate resistance in a rape or sexual assault and that the women we are training have only a short-time in which to learn defense against an armed rapist. That is, we are not teaching someone to defend against assassination nor are we teaching women who have months or years to devote to learning self-defense tools.

In general, our approach is that self-defense against an armed rapist is
• Straightforward and simple
• applicable to a variety of approaches (front, rear, side, standing or on the ground)
• effective against a variety of weapons

The first evening we taught instructors our approach and practiced. The second evening class assistants joined us and lead instructors and suited instructors worked in small groups with one or two class assistants and each other to teach and practice the approach.

Take-away: My experience in working with IMPACT Israel instructors on defense against an armed rapist underscored my belief that a simple, straightforward approach that can be broadly applied is the way to go.

Jill and Mark discuss a teaching point