What Every Woman Should Know

Part One -

Heather Winkeljohn sits down with Sean Murphy, a law enforcement professional with more than 18 years of experience at both the state and federal levels.

Sean has spent over a decade investigating serious crimes, including kidnapping, sexual assault, sex trafficking, and crimes against children. He has also taught defensive tactics to law enforcement officers and worked in the SWAT environment.

In Part One, Sean shares practical insights into how criminals think, the importance of situational awareness, and the strategies every woman should know to better protect herself.

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Disclaimer:
This episode is shared for educational and storytelling purposes only and is not intended to replace professional therapy, counseling, or medical care. Heather Winkeljohn is not a licensed therapist or mental health professional. The views and experiences shared by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Heather Winkeljohn or She Fights or UnstoppableVoicesMedia.com. If you are struggling, we encourage you to seek support from a qualified professional.

If you are in crisis or thinking about self-harm, contact your local emergency services or, in the U.S., call/text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — available 24/7, free and confidential.

New Life Ministries (website), a Christian counseling and support ministry providing faith-based care and resources to those in need.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:47

These are the voices that refuse to be silenced. Real women, real stories, unbreakable spirit. This is Chief Fight.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

My guest today is Sean Murphy. He's a law enforcement professional with over 18 years of experience on both the state and federal level. He has experience in teaching defensive tactics to law enforcement, as well as experience in the SWAT realm. And for more than a decade of his experience, it's been dedicated to conducting or supervising investigations into crimes against persons. And during his tenure, he has secured arrests and convictions for crimes, including kidnapping, hostage taking, murder, sexual assault, sex trafficking, and a wide variety of crimes against children. And Sean actually regularly contributes his knowledge and his skills in the smart girl self-defense classes. He comes in and shares his knowledge and hands-on works with the ladies on different drills. So we've been working together for a few years now, and it's been great. So I just want to say I'm honored and thank you so much for doing this today and sharing your knowledge and expertise.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Thank you, Heather. I really appreciate it. It's uh cathartic to me to help out with Smart Girl, you know, and like you said, I yeah, it has been a few years now, but it's good because for me, it's sort of a way to try to equip people to get ahead of the power curve. A lot of the aftermath of when bad things happen to people. For me, it's cathartic to try to prep people in advance so that maybe they don't become some story I have to, you know, hear later down the road. So thank you for having me. It's it's truly an honor. I I love I love what you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

Thank you. Yeah, and I I definitely don't see the result or the outcomes like you do in your line of work, but we do have plenty of women come through classes that have been traumatized, and I can just see the effects on their face sometimes. So just even that glimpse is it's it's it's actually really um horrifying, uh honestly, to think about what some of these women go through. But from your experience investigating violent crimes, what are the biggest misconceptions that women have about personal safety? And what is there something they should be focusing on instead?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

I think one of the biggest misconceptions could be almost that stranger danger concept. The likelihood, and statistics will support this. I apologize, I can't give you a chapter and verse on statistics uh off the top of my head, but the likelihood is that a woman's gonna know her attacker in some fashion. They may be intimately involved, right? When we're talking about domestic violence, fossil abuse things, date rape, all of these terms that we've heard over the years. We we need to understand that these are people we know. It might be a guy in your office setting, it may be a guy you've been out with a few times, it may be a friend of a friend. And what people sometimes often miss is that someone with a predatory mindset will seek out ways to prey upon people, right? They they are predators by nature, you know. You look at it in nature, and predators stalk, hunt, and ambush their prey. Well, for a lot of people who are wired with a predatory mindset, their stalking of the prey isn't necessarily like the stalking we think of, you know, dealing with a those kind of situations. It's the how can I gain the trust, gain the access to get within that bubble, to get close enough to do my ambush, right?

SPEAKER_05 4:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

And we see a lot of that in domestic violence. We see a lot of it in sex trafficking. There's a lot of parallels there. When you start looking at the predator who is whatever their goal is, they will start isolating that individual. And that's where the ambush can happen. Yeah. So I would say a strong misconception, especially if a lady hasn't endured victimization in the past, they're always worried because they've had some kind of safe haven, maybe, you know, they're always worried about the stranger danger concept, which is legitimate, and that can happen very quickly. And maybe we can talk about that a little later too. But I think the misconception is that they need to understand that they may be familiar with, may not intimately be involved with, you know, they're not maybe not super closely knit to you, but you are probably gonna know that person, which ultimately goes into you have to overcome that if you are in a situation where you have to protect yourself, it's gonna be very hard for you to reconcile this person that you know and you are comfortable with. Now all of a sudden you have to be violent against them because they're being violent against you, right? I hope that makes sense. But I would say that's one of the biggest misconceptions.

SPEAKER_04 6:01

Yeah, I see that in the classes as well. Yeah, everybody's always worried about the guy hiding in between cars or behind the bushes. And we we do get women in here that have experienced that craziness, but absolutely those that that they know, and I think you said it a long time ago. We were having a conversation about uh the trafficking, sex trafficking, and you know, everybody always thinks of the movie Taken, where the daughter's hiding under the bed, and you know, I love that movie. It's a great movie, yeah. But uh, but you once said that the average trafficking victim is 15 years old and walks out of her door willingly, and so that that was really like the light came on for me because I thought, wow, I had no idea. And that goes back to what you were saying, where they it's like a psychological game.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

It is very overt and very high risk for me to take someone that I don't know, it is way too risky, and it is much easier to target someone who doesn't have anyone who's going to try to come find them, anyone who doesn't have a support system to tell about the bad things going on in their world, and so a lot of the sex trafficking victims that I've recovered over the years, a lot of them have been, yeah. The the I think the the stats, at least within the last couple of years, have been the identified victims have all been like not all, but the average has been 15 years old. But you you see a lot of the late teens, there's an unstable home life, they have no one to talk to, and it might be as subtle as they're sitting on a park bench because they just can't deal with the stress at home, and a guy approaches them, and he's the best thing that has ever come into their world until he's not. Yeah, but they use these tactics and they play the brain games to gain the trust, yeah, and then they abuse that trust, they violate that trust, and next thing you know, they're in this world that they didn't want to be in in the first place, and they have no one to help get them out of it. And you know, sex trafficking looks different in different parts of the world, that is true, but when we see it here, which there is plenty of it here, it is not a faraway problem, it is a local problem, it is a national problem. That's a lot of times what we see. It's the the Romeo coming in to save you, and then once you give over that trust because you have no one else in your life to trust, he violates that trust. And he's just another person to violate the trust you have.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

Yeah. So you you have worked on crimes extensively, like crimes like kidnapping and assault. What are common pre-indicators or behaviors that women should recognize before a situation escalates?

SPEAKER_01 9:12

There will be things that don't sit right with you. I would encourage people to, and this is a very uh commonly thrown around phrase, I don't necessarily like it, but it's true, is you got to trust your gut. I have talked to many, many victims of all kinds of different things, but many, many women, survivors of sexual assault, other types of assaults, robberies, whatever it may be. And at some point when I'm talking to them, almost every one of them will tell me I knew something was wrong. They couldn't necessarily articulate what it was, but something in them was telling them that something was wrong with the situation. Yeah, and then so many times after that statement, they'll say something to the effect of, but I blank anyway, I went anyway, I did it anyway, I said it was okay, whatever it is. There's always a but I knew something was wrong, but I didn't, I I X, Y, and Z. If there's a but in someone's mind, they need to listen to that, right? That is our intuition, it has been ingrained in us, and you and I have talked about this plenty of times. That's how humans survive for so long is we have this system in our head that helps us know if things are okay or not. And unfortunately, in today's society, we are so plugged into everything that we're unplugged. Yeah, if that makes sense, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

We lose our people reading skills, yes, yeah. Kind of get dumbed down, right? When we're so invented in technology, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

100%. And the other thing I would tell people to, in that context, trust your gut. If something's telling you something's wrong, try to find another route to go. If you're being pressured one way, go the other way. You know, that that kind of thing. The other thing I would tell people is that predatory mindset, they're looking to stalk and then ambush their prey. So an ambush, they are going to be in a very highly aroused state mentally, where their adrenaline is going to be going off, all their levels are going to be through the roof because they already know that they're in a fight.

SPEAKER_05 11:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

But they know it before you do.

SPEAKER_05 11:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Right. So they know what's about to happen, and their body is preparing for it. So they're going through all these things. And you'll see little things like you might see somebody's jugular really starting to throb because their heart rate's elevated.

SPEAKER_05 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Um, you know, you're engaging in conversation, you ask a very simple question with a simple answer, and they go, What? Because they're not hearing, they're not listening, they're already thinking about what's about to happen, right? Yeah, you may see like witness glances, they're looking around to see like who's gonna see the dirt I'm about to do. You may see some kind of shaking, right? Because all the adrenaline is flowing. You may see it is very, very slight, but the the pitch of their voice may raise up a little bit because they're under stress, right? They may be sweating, they may be breathing heavy. They know their body has prepared them for a violent encounter before it started because they know it's going to happen. Yeah, yeah, and the problem with that is we're behind the power curve. So when the ambush comes, all of a sudden we have to play catch-up. And so the sooner you can pick up on those things and maybe position yourself with an escape route or a barrier in between to build in more time. If you start to do those things, a kitchen island, a parked car, yeah, whatever it may be, right? Put something in between you if you're approached by a stranger, whatever. Yeah, you you'll start to see that whatever they're approaching you with, begging for change, asking for a cigarette, do you have a phone I could borrow, whatever it is, you'll see that that ruse will not continue if you start buying the time because they only thought about it to a certain degree.

SPEAKER_05 13:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

And so build in that time so that you actually are not as far behind if and when the attack launches. Right.

SPEAKER_04 13:42

That makes a lot of sense. And it and you you said, you know, like when they say, like, you have a cigarette, you have the time, they're banking on the fact that you're distracted, yes, and the fact that you're in a comfortable routine, right?

SPEAKER_05 13:54

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

And I and and you know, the other thing that kind of I clued into, like, I watch all these weird violent crime videos where they're you know, close caption camera and stuff, is they change their stance often, right? They get into a lot of times, yeah, that that fighting stance or the bladed stance because they're already pounced.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. I've had it happen to me many times. Yeah, and you know what? Sometimes, if you can take away the element of that surprise for them, they may not launch the attack. So, and I've had that happen to me where they might start blading their stance, they might start clenching the fist. I've literally told people if you clench your fist one more time, we're gonna have a problem, right? And all of a sudden they're like, Oh, oh, and and they don't know what to do. They're they're they're like, Oh man, they're on to me. Yeah, you know, I was watching a documentary one time, and it was this mama elk, so no antlers, and there were these two wolves, and they were trying to get the baby elk. Well, mama hid the baby elk under a bunch of logs, and she starts running away. And the wolves, what do they do? They chase her because they like to attack from behind, right? She led them away from the baby elk. And you know what those guys did? The two wolves, when mama elk turned around, what'd they do? They stopped in their tracks, they didn't know what to do. So, my point is if you can sort of take away that position of ambush, the mental game of that ambush, if you can take it away by calling them out on it or putting them in a position where they don't feel comfortable launching that attack, they may not know how to go from there.

SPEAKER_04 15:31

Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So, in your investigations, have you seen patterns and situations where victims unintentionally increase their risk?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Yes. So when you start studying criminology and crime in general, uh, especially these types of crimes, there's a section of that of victimology, which is the study of the victim. There's sort of a sliding scale of whether or not that person is in a high-risk lifestyle. If they are engaged in street level commercial sex, unfortunately, women that engage in that world are many, many, many times victimized. It's a very high-risk lifestyle. You're having numerous interactions with unknown individuals in a high volume. You go complete opposite, and maybe you're a nun living in you know some kind of church setting, and you that's a very low-risk lifestyle. Those are extremes, obviously. But if we think about how we live our lives, the decisions we make have an impact on the risks that we incur. So if someone is living the party lifestyle and they're always out of the bar, you know, and they're always intoxicated, the chances of them meeting somebody that might want to take advantage of them obviously elevates. But again, the lifestyle you live is very situationally dependent. That could look very different from a college girl living in a dorm to a professional woman living in New York City who has to walk to work every day versus maybe a grandmother who spends most of her time at home. Right. The the exposure you have, and I talk about this a lot uh in in your seminars, but no matter what a bad guy is after, they need two things to get it. They need access and they need isolation, access to a victim, isolation of a victim. Yeah, and if you can control one of those variables, you are infinitely more prepared or significantly less likely to be victimized. And look, the access can be in today's world, and we could talk a long time about this heather, yeah, but uh, you know, in today's world, it can be online access, it could be access through social circles, it could be access because you gotta go to the grocery store, whatever it is, you gotta partake in the world in some way. But if you can control that access one way or another, you know, with how you position yourself when you go to the store or who you interact with online, and that that that's a whole nother thing, a whole nother thing, especially when you start talking about and for women's self-defense, for me that's part and parcel to protecting their children. Absolutely, um, yeah, and and that is a huge, a huge thing, the online enticement, the online victimization, and all that kind of thing. But the access, if you can control that access, then you're gonna be better situated. Yeah, the isolation that is like back to the witness glances. Are we in the dark alley? Nobody's around, okay. I can ambush you, right? But it also comes into the context of the social isolation, like we talked about with the sex trafficking before. I'm a 15-year-old girl sitting on a park bench and I don't have anyone to talk to about bad things going on in my life. That is that type of isolation that is perfect for somebody of a predatory mindset. We see the same thing in domestic violence, they start to establish control over every little activity of the victim. And so all of a sudden, the people that she's been acquainted with or friends with or seen routinely for 10 years, now all of a sudden she's not interacting with those people.

SPEAKER_05 19:30

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

And so when you see that wedge starting starting to be driven in between someone and their support system that's been reliable for them, that is a huge red flag because they are seeking isolation so that they can inflict upon that person whatever it is that they want to do. Yeah, I hope I hope that makes sense. And we talk about that a lot, but you can use that access and isolation kind of variable system in many broad contexts, right? Not just the strange nature thing, but also in the dating world and and those types of things too. When we raising your kids, like if you have a great relationship with your kid and all of a sudden they immediately stop talking to you and they want to hang out with a new boyfriend or something like that. Hey, yeah, what is driving that wedge in there? What isolation is that person seeking? And we need to try to combat that.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Yeah, you you you talked about that in one of the classes, and I do remember a mother emailed me after hearing that, and she and her daughter they recognized that very technique that this new boyfriend was trying to isolate her, to get her to cut ties to friends, cut ties to parents, you know, spend most of if not all your time with me. And they actually recognize that because of what you said. That's so that's that's huge. Yeah, that's huge.

SPEAKER_05 20:51

That's great. That's great.

SPEAKER_04 20:53

I would also add maybe like one of the ways we unintentionally increase our risk as women is we try to be nice and polite because of how we're brought up and socialized. Absolutely. Yeah, so that right there, they bank on that.

unknown 21:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Well, and I mean, how many times do you hear someone say to a little kid, like, oh, be nice. Boy, girl, it doesn't matter. Be nice. Well, you know what? Maybe in certain circumstances, maybe I shouldn't be nice. Maybe I shouldn't be accepting of this of this behavior.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

You've been listening to guest Sean Murphy, who has years of experience in investigating just about every type of crime and predator. Listen in in episode 11 as he continues to share his knowledge of predatory behavior and how you as a woman can recognize these predators as well as keep yourself and your loved ones safe.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Thank you for joining us on Cheap Fight, where women's voices rise and strength takes our stage. Today's story's moved to you. Subscribe, leave a review, and follow us on social media at Smart Girl Self-Defense. For more information about Smart Girl Self-Defense, please visit SmartGirlsd.com. And if you're interested in powerful stories of women in sport, not only the pioneers who shaped history, but the women competing, coaching, and changing the game today, we invite you to listen to Unstoppable Podcast. Unstoppable blends immersive storytelling with thoughtful interviews exploring the moments, movements, and people who continue to redefine what's possible for women in sport. You can find Unstoppable Podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, keep fighting, keep rising, and never forget the power of your voice.