Damsel in Defense offers women self-defense alternatives

MOSES LAKE — Crime knows no boundaries. It can happen in the city, it can happen in the country. Any time, day or night.

For just that reason, two Boise, Idaho women, Mindy Lin and Bethany Hughes, founded a self-defense based company called Damsel in Defense in September 2011 with a line of non-lethal defense products. Damsel in Defense, which is a multi-level marketing company, is about equipping women with the tools to not only keep them safe, but to give them the confidence to know they have a way out if threatened.

According to the website, Damsel in Defense recruited 1,000 Independent Damsel Pros within the first year and expanded its nationwide team to over 10,000 independent sales representatives.

Karen Johnson of Pasco is building a sales team in Moses Lake.

”Our mission is to help women stay safe. We talk a lot about situational awareness and how to get out of dangerous situations,” Johnson said. “We do that through home parties during which we give different educational presentations. We also carry a line of small, easy-to-handle personal self defense tools such as stun guns, pepper sprays and personal alarms.”

There are other multi-level marketing companies out there like Avon, Mary Kay, Younique, and more who are only targeted to women. The main difference with Damsel in Defense is that they are the first ones to tap into the self-defense industry. The Damsel in Defense product line includes products like pepper spray, stun guns, emergency kits and more.

“We focus mainly on women because there’s a higher crime rate against us. One in five women are going to be a victim of sexual assault. One in three will be the victim of domestic violence by their partners,” she said. “My personal story is that I was attacked at a rest area. We stopped at a rest stop. My husband was asleep in the truck. I went inside and a man followed me in and raped me. If I would have had pepper spray or a stun gun I might have been able to avoid that situation.”

The stun gun is a hand-held device that must be touched to the attacker in order to discharge, in comparison to a Taser, which fires two small dart-like electrodes and stays connected to the gun. The pepper spray shoots a stream rather than a spray and includes an ultraviolet dye component that identifies an attacker up to seven days following the incident.

“Statistics show that once an attacker determines you are the target, you have seven seconds before they are on top of you,” Johnson explained. “So you have to make a decision quickly. Our standard pepper spray will shoot 16 feet. It also has the ultra-violet dye in it. So if you are attacked and report it to the police, even if they pick up a suspect seven days later they can still detect the dye with a black light.”

These defense devices provide an alternative to a concealed weapon where any number of bad things can go wrong like the tragic situation in 2014 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where a Blackfoot, Idaho woman was killed in the local Walmart store when her 2-year-old son got into her purse and accidentally shot her with the gun she was carrying,

The sales force’s main objective is to move product to be sure, but Johnson said it’s also part of the job to educate women to make healthy decisions concerning domestic violence or provide information on other options.

“We hook them up with different resources and the domestic violence shelters. The national rape abuse network helps,” she said. “We also highly encourage women to get into self-defense classes. We do all of that whether they buy our products or not.”

To get more information on Damsel in Defense products go online at www.mydamselpro.net/KarenJ or call Johnson at 509-551-3198.