Carlie's Crusade was formed on April 14, 2004 in response to the abduction and murder of a Florida girl, Carlie Brucia. The abduction was video taped through a business' surveillance camera and was the catalyst for the founders of Carlie’s Crusade Foundation to spread the knowledge gained through their martial arts, law enforcement, Internet forensics’ and teaching careers to assist young people in abduction prevention. What was originally designed to assist young female’s, has grown to include all children, their parents and adults who work with children. Our goal is to teach you how NOT to be a target so you will NOT become a victim.

Our training consists of a lecture about abduction, victimization, internet safety, and self-preservation concepts. The classes are age specific and increase in intensity as the age of the students rises. All the children are given an ID/DNA kit that will give the parents a way to record the child's finger prints, a place for a current picture, dental information, shoe tags, DNA envelope etc. Our seminar’s teach the children how NOT to be a target so that they will NOT become a victim. We do this with videos, DVD's, handouts and general FUN discussion. When possible, the parents are given a separate lecture involving legal issues, sex offender registries, and ideas and strategies to apply at home with their children. While the parents get the lecture, the children are brought to another area and begin self-defense training. This is very low-key at first and is primarily intended for them to focus on how they present themselves to a possible predator. When the parents re-join the children, we work together with them showing them basic self protection skills and have them work with their children to assist their learning. This is done to lower the children’s anxiety while maintaining an environment conducive to learning life-altering skills.

We inform parents on statistics on missing and abused children. Parents need to know that 800,000 children are reported missing each year. That is more then 2,000 per day. However the key word here is REPORTED. How many are not reported that add to these numbers? Statistics tell us that one in five girls and one in ten boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood. It is important not be scared or paranoid but to be aware of crimes against children and how to teach their children the rules of safety. Although the possibility of their child going missing or being sexually exploited may be remote knowing what to do if put in that situation is a must. Parents need to be proactive and not reactive.

Carlie’s Crusade provides research documentation to parents about sex offenders. Research that concluded that the typical sex offender is male, begins molesting at age 15, engages in a variety of deviant behavior and molests an average of 117 youngsters, most who do not report the crime. The research concluded that those who attack young boys molest an average of 281. With the promise of confidentiality, offenders admit an average of 75 sex crimes. By the time he reaches adulthood, the average pedophile has attempted more than 75 child molestations. Of rapist, 26 percent began as pedophiles and 9 percent as voyeurs. The message to families is to not live in fear but be cautious, alert and prepared. The child’s best weapon against these crimes is his or her own head, ability to think and avoidance of certain actions and situations.

Next we provide parents information from the New York State Sex Registry at the following web site: http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/index.htm. We provide them information of frequently asked questions, how many children go missing every year in New York State. We also provide information on the different levels of sex offenders in their county as well as the number of offender in the three categories. We direct them on how to view the information on the level three offenders and their area. These are the most likely to commit the crime again.

A major portion of our message is to understand the sex offender laws in our state and our nation. Information is provided on the history of these laws and the challenges we face to change the loopholes in current state programs. We inform parents and guardians that there are 550,000 registered sex offenders in the United States of which the location of a least 100,000 is not known. We suggest that finding these violent repeat offenders is just as important as finding water on the far side of Mars or 100,000 known terrorists.

One of the goals of the Carlie’s Crusade team is to give the parents and guardians the information they need and the folks they need to contact to help save our children. Here are the web sites that parents need to visit to contact their New York State Assemblyman, U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senators:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/