Trust your gut feeling!

A heart wrenching story

Recently I saw a TV interview with the Austrian kidnapping victim Natascha Kampusch. As you may recall, she was kidnapped at the age of 10, and held captive in Strasshof, Lower Austria for more than eight years before she finally managed to escape. A good part of those years, she was held in a dungeon in her captors house. The interview was a part of the promotion related to her book about her ordeal.

The part that really caught my attention was when the interviewer told the young woman to relay the day when she was abducted. She vividly relayed how she was on her way to school that fateful morning and how she saw a man (her captor) ahead of her.

The man was leaning against a car, and Kampusch remembered that the man seemed nervous, "almost as if he was waiting for somebody". She said she felt that there was something odd about the man and she wanted to cross over to the other side of the road. However, she said she brushed the feeling aside and walked right past her captor, who grabbed the girl and put her in his car.

Your intuition at work

Of course it is being wise after the event to claim that simply crossing the street would have saved Natascha Kampusch from being kidnapped that day in 1998. That is a little too close to blaming the victim in my book...

What this story does to me, is presenting a prime example of your gut feeling or intuition, and how these processes may work. Very often, victims of crimes like abduction, attempted rape, rape and robbery describe how they get this feeling about something "not being quite right", or this sense of urgency or danger.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon at all to brush our intuition to the side. "This can't be right." "He looks so ordinary." "Nothing serious can happens in our small town." "...At this time of the day? Nah..." "Probably just my imagination." Way to often, we are being taught and raised to trust our logic and reasoning and overlook our intuitive mind and our senses. As such, we may indeed miss out on obvious danger signs.

"The Gift of Fear"

I will urge you to read the acclaimed book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin de Becker. It's an eye opener when it comes to avoiding violence and trusting your intuition. From what I understand, the book can now also be purchased as a Kindle e-book from Amazon. Get it!

Furthermore, you will be able to read hundreds of such examples in the Woman Can reports and e-book series here.

And what ever you do, please trust your instincts! They are very seldom - if ever - wrong.

Woman who cried rape

Where's the solidarity with the real victims?

Consider for a moment the pain, humiliation, trauma and some times life-long suffering and multi-faceted setbacks and problems to just cope, any victim of sexual assault or rape may encounter.

Add to that all the myths, the self-blame and the burden of going through the processes of filing police reports, medical check-ups, trials and what not.

Given all this, it is truly beyond belief how a seemingly well-functioning adult woman can cry rape. And for what? To avoid paying for a taxi fare! I am utterly dumbfounded and speechless, really.

A false accuser jailed

Given the above circumstances, I find it absolutely correct that the British woman who falsely accused a taxi driver for rape has been given a 12 months jail sentence.

In fact i would like to extend a thank you and applaud the proper authorities for taking a stand, basically saying that this will not be accepted.

The victims will need compassion, support and understanding, each and every step of the way. That goes for you and I as individuals, as well as us as a society. The last thing these survivors need is a slap in the face and more poisonous food for all the doubters and haters out there.

We all make mistakes

Look, we can all make mistakes, and I have no problem understanding how a youngster - given the right circumstances - can falsely accuse someone of assault or attempted abduction. As such, there will probably always be a very small number of false accusations of sexual assault and rape.

Let us however get rid of such rubbish as this British woman was capable of. This is a crime, something which the court now has agreed to.

In the words of a police detective: "She had numerous opportunities to tell the truth but refused and continued with the allegation which nearly cost an innocent man his livelihood. This type of false allegation undermines the true victims of such crime and this should serve as a warning that we will prosecute people who make malicious claims."