Since the body of 30-year-old Japan­ese pan­nist Asa­mi Na­gakiya was dis­cov­ered in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Ash Wednes­day in 2016, to this day, peo­ple are cau­tioned, es­pe­cial­ly women, to walk in groups if they must pass through the sa­van­nah at night.

Women still fear blind spots or dark, se­clud­ed ar­eas in busi­ness places

as the mur­der of Shan­non Ban­field hasn't been for­got­ten. The 20-year-old bank em­ploy­ee's body was found at IAM and Com­pa­ny on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, on De­cem­ber 8, 2016.

Fe­male pas­sen­gers have be­come wary and fear­ful of PH taxis, es­pe­cial­ly when trav­el­ling at night even be­fore the mur­ders of 16-year-old school­girl Rachael Ramkissoon in San Raphael in Jan­u­ary 2017, 18-year-old Ashan­ti Ri­ley's mur­der in San­ta Cruz in De­cem­ber 2020 and just re­cent­ly, the mur­der of 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt that has shak­en the peo­ple and con­tin­ues to grip the na­tion. Vig­ils were held across the land for the court clerk.

The fear is pal­pa­ble, cit­i­zens, not just women, are fed up with be­ing vic­tims of vi­o­lent crimes and home in­va­sions.

Af­ter Bharatt's mur­der, karate in­struc­tor Sen­sei De­r­ick Williams is of­fer­ing free self-de­fence lessons to women and girls to em­pow­er and en­able them to fight back against as­saults and at­tacks. He is al­so ap­peal­ing to oth­er mar­tial arts in­struc­tors to of­fer their ser­vices to help women learn how to de­fend them­selves.

If you are run­ning or ex­er­cis­ing by your­self in a pub­lic space, trav­el­ling or walk­ing home alone in the dark from work and some­one were to at­tack you, are you able to de­fend your­self or fight off mul­ti­ple as­sailants?

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Williams said "We've been hold­ing these self-de­fence class­es for women since 2016 but in small groups in ar­eas like Diego Mar­tin, Laven­tille, and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres.

"We could not do it last year be­cause of the COVID-19 health and safe­ty mea­sures. This time, how­ev­er, with pub­lic pres­sure and the out­cry from the pub­lic over the young la­dy's mur­der that it has reached a na­tion­al scale.

Karate instructor Sensei Derick Williams.

COURTESY DERICK WILLIAMS

"The re­sponse has been over­whelm­ing. Peo­ple have been call­ing from ear­ly in the morn­ing and late at nights av­er­ag­ing 20 calls a day.

"We've had more than 250 ap­pli­cants by Tues­day (Feb­ru­ary 9), some women are call­ing from as far as Ce­dros and Ma­yaro."

He said he had got­ten some favourable re­spons­es from the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Queen's Park Oval and the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, and by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) fa­cil­i­ty to hold the class­es, with the acad­e­my look­ing the most promis­ing.

Williams, a sixth-de­gree black belt in Shotokan karate and a third-de­gree black belt in Brazil­ian Jiu-Jit­su and Pres­i­dent of the T&T Karate Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTKO) said the class­es are geared to women and girls from 15 years up. Some of them want­ed to bring their sis­ters, daugh­ters, fam­i­ly mem­bers or in groups.

He said class­es will sim­u­late re­al-life sce­nar­ios as much as pos­si­ble that women will en­counter in the streets or their homes, such as rape, home in­va­sions, phys­i­cal as­saults and road rage.

Williams said be­sides show­ing par­tic­i­pants how to ap­ply kicks, punch­es and grap­pling tech­niques to vul­ner­a­ble points on their at­tack­ers' anato­my, they will al­so learn to use ver­bal tech­niques, like de-es­ca­la­tion to defuse a sit­u­a­tion, how to use their voice as­sertive­ly, body lan­guage and poise, how to walk with con­fi­dence, head up, eyes fo­cused, and at a steady pace.

He said peo­ple had to get re­con­nect­ed with what the el­ders called their 'gut feel­ing' or in­stinct and obey it, like if they were feel­ing un­com­fort­able or get­ting 'bad vibes' from a per­son or en­ter­ing a place or ve­hi­cle, to avoid that per­son or not en­ter that venue or taxi.

Williams said one of the most re­quest­ed self-de­fence tech­niques women want­ed to learn was how to counter an at­tack and grab from be­hind.

He said his in­struc­tors can give them the tools, but it was up to the in­di­vid­ual's de­ter­mi­na­tion, to prac­tice and ap­ply what they had learned.

Williams said a per­son can on­ly learn so much self-de­fence in a month, some mar­tial artists study for 30-40 years and con­tin­ued learn­ing.

He said he hoped that they stayed on and be­came more in­volved in mar­tial arts and even­tu­al­ly join a do­jo for more train­ing.

He said they were cur­rent­ly con­cen­trat­ing their ef­forts in Port-of-Spain, and de­pend­ing on the suc­cess and de­mand for the self-de­fence class­es from women spreads across the coun­try, they can cater for women in Cen­tral and at SAPA in the South­land.

Williams said they were await­ing the dates when NA­PA would be made avail­able to hold class­es as the venue had pri­or en­gage­ments. Class­es would be two days a week, from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm, ten­ta­tive­ly.

He said they were al­ready giv­en clear­ance by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice via let­ter to ob­serve and put in place COVID-19 pro­to­cols in the self-de­fence class­es and a po­lice of­fi­cer will al­so be present.

For more in­for­ma­tion con­tact the T&T Karate Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTKO) on Face­book or 472-2924.