I'm going to link to this video here, but I need to give a strong WARNING that the last minute of the video contains some extremely horrifying pictures of a true crime scene involving murdered young girls. Watch the video but if you're squeamish or delicate definitely turn it off before minute 18 begins.
I have vivid memories of being herded into a gym during 3rd grade at Belt Line Elementary (so, 1983, 1984?) and being shown this video. I found it absolutely terrifying. I didn't understand what the images at the end were, really, but the sight of that lone empty shoe floating in the creek was extremely frightening...I remember the other kids saying "there's a cut-off foot in the shoe!" I had nightmares for weeks. The sight of jelly beans still occasionally freaks me out and makes me think of this horrifying little piece. Now that I have tracked it down on the internet and watched it as an adult I would like to know who the HECK at Belt Line Elementary thought it was a good idea to show this to a bunch of 8 year olds?!
Now obviously being a product not only of the early 1960's but also of the Highway Safety Foundation, it has some very cheesy and quite laughable moments. And I do remember being confused as a kid watching this (even then it was two decades old!), that some of it was actually kind of funny when it was clearly supposed to be a very serious message.
Seeing it now, I can tell it was meant to be geared more towards educating parents than children. Again, I ask, WHAT were they THINKING, showing this to little kids?! I seriously think I am scarred for life. And as I've posted before, even though I know the threat of one of my stepkids being kidnapped by a stranger is a million to one chance, the thought never leaves my mind when I have them out somewhere by myself. I am paranoid and I hope I'm not scarring them for life in a whole other way by never letting them get even out of my reach (luckily that's not often, as Bill is usually with us and I'm not quite such a quivering scaredy-cat mess when he's in charge) :)
Back to this horrid video....another quibble I have is when it talks about educating children about "molesters" not once does it say that children can be and are molested by people they know and trust! In fact they're much more likely to experience that than they are a stranger abduction. Maybe it's a sign of the times that we know so much more now, that we know to teach them about good touches and bad touches even from people who are not strangers....was 1964 still the dark ages about this stuff? 1984? Unbelievable.
Oh and the last little thing I found terrifying about this video: the inner feminist in me screeched in horror when the narrator says the little girls are arguing about "whether it's better to be a nurse or a schoolteacher"...they just had to squeeze that in there, didn't they? Even though this is supposedly a video about protecting children from danger and NOT a video about reinforcing archaic gender roles. UGH!
Scary indeed.
That video was horrible. I saw it first when I was in 3rd grade at Otis Brown Elementary in Irving, and then a second time in 4th grade at Northside Elementary in DeSoto. The first time I saw it, I was convinced there was a child molester around every corner. The second time? We dealt with it in a different way. I remember going to recess after the film and playing with Carol Knight, Brenda Smith, Terri Archer and Khysunja and roleplaying the film. One person was chosen to be the "child molester" (which apparently really just meant the murderer because most of us apparently didn't really grasp the concept that the little girls in the film had been sexually abused) and the rest of us were the victims and the one chosen to be the bad guy would chase the rest of us while we ran an hid, and when she found us, she'd pretend to kill us. We did this every day for a couple of days, switching off roles, until one of the teachers saw what we were doing and totally freaked out. But come on! THEY SHOWED US THE FILM IN THE FIRST PLACE! We were just dealing with it in a way that made it less terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe you saw this twice. And the age difference between us tells me that DeSoto ISD administrators made the oh-so-wise decision to show this for AT LEAST seven freaking years in a row. Unbelievable. That's thousands of kids! Someone on a board commented that their parents had to sign a permission slip allowing them to see it...I wonder if Mom had to do that? I wonder if she'd even remember.
ReplyDeleteMy question is, did you watch it again as an adult from my link? I actually dug this thing up months ago but have been too scared to actually watch it until today. I'm positive I'm going to have nightmares as a result.
She did have to sign a permission slip. I remember that.
ReplyDeleteI watched it last night right before I commented, but I'll admit I took your warning to heart and didn't watch the very end of it. Interestingly, I don't remember seeing all of what was in the linked video. From the time where the video sort of broke off and had that "Your Local Safety Council blahblah" screen, nothing that played from there to the crime scene footage was anything I remember seeing before. If I had seen that, then I think I might have managed to figure out that the little girls had been sexually abused. I didn't catch that as an 8 and 9 year old. Our film skipped directly from the second little girl's scream to the crime scene footage.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteThat Safety Council blip was weird, wasn't it? So random.
Didn't you love the part where they're escorting a "molester" down the sidewalk, and the poor little girl he supposedly molested is trailing after them, sadly looking at the ground...holy moly that was creepy!
Now I can blame Mom, if she signed that permission slip!