It’s about being smart. Not being scared.

That’s the message of Escape School, Braxton Brown told Brownie scouts from Halifax and Northampton counties this afternoon.

Escape School, sponsored locally by Hockaday Funeral Home, is a program which teaches children ways to avoid abduction.

It also a program which is endorsed by the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office and the Roanoke Rapids Police Department, where today’s class was held.

The program here was established in 2004 and has been taught to classes with as few as six children to an audience as large as 400.

“More and more children are being abducted,” Brown told parents and troop leaders in the audience. “You can buy life insurance and auto insurance. The one thing you can’t buy is a policy to protect your children 24 hours a day. If we can keep one child from being abducted, it will be worthwhile.”

While there have been no reported child abductions, other than parental abductions in Roanoke Rapids in the last seven or eight years, the area is ripe for them, Brown said.

The many major highways going through the area give abductors escape avenues, he said.

Of the 46,000 children who are abducted each year, 300 are never seen alive. There are 125,000 abduction attempts in the country each year.

One of the lessons Escape School teaches is not all strangers are bad. “We’re going to erase the board on this,” Brown said.

Using a rod and reel with a huge, colorful lure, Brown explained to the children abductors will use their own bait — the promise of a video game a store may not have, a new toy or something else a child may be attracted to.

That’s why it’s important parents and children should stay together when shopping, he said.

The latest statistics show it takes only 60 seconds to abduct a child. He told about an abduction story where a woman took a child from a Walmart restroom by using a chemical to make her drowsy, cutting her hair and taking her out while walking past the child’s mother.

He explained techniques to escape, including the Velcro technique, where a child runs and latches on to the nearest person they find, screaming, a method which makes a stranger involved.

The windmill technique is effective for adults.

The windmill technique, he said, involves moving your arm in a circle to break the hold of the abductor.

If someone in a car asks you for directions go in the opposite direction of the vehicle.

Never, he said, agree to help an adult find a lost animal.

Should a child be abducted and put in a trunk, Brown told the children, “You have my permission to pull all the wires you want to.”

If a child is in the front seat, another technique is to jump to the floorboard and push the abductor’s foot on the gas pedal to make them crash into a car ahead of them.

In a hotel, flipping a light switch on and off is an international distress signal. Brown told the children if they are on a bike and are being abducted to cling to the bike and scream.

Brown demonstrates how clinging to your bike can help you.

“Summer’s coming up,” Brown said. “You’ll be playing outside but you need to stay close to home. Make sure you know who your neighbors are and have numbers where your parents can get in touch with you.”

Brown told the parents to stay with their children while shopping, dividing time between what the adults need to look for and what the children want to see. “How would you feel if you had to go home without your loved one? Keep your children with you at all times.”

Samantha Lewter, troop 1503 leader, said she was impressed with the program. “More people need to be aware of this.”

Lieutenant Charles Burnette of the police department, said, “I think it’s an excellent program. We feel fortunate that our Citizens on Patrol leader is teaching the program.”

For more information on Escape School call Hockaday at 252-537-6144.