• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Study of Violence

Violence Prevention Education

  • Courses
  • Team
  • Contact Us

Nat’s Story

March 3, 2020 by user Leave a Comment

SURVIVOR STORIES

Nat’s Story

In the mid-1990s, Nat worked as a stockbroker in Montreal. Nat had made it a point never to date someone from work. “Never mix business and pleasure” had become her motto. Not because of any prior personal experience, just something she had decided at the beginning of her career that she would apply and stick to.

One day, her company hired a new guy to join her team. He was good looking, charming, smart, and funny. The first day on the job, he asks Nat out. She responds that while she is flattered, she has a strict personal rule to never date at work. He tells her he understands and leaves it at that. However, he remains persistent. Extremely persistent.

Undeterred, the co-worker continues to ask her out for six months But because they work long hours together (sometimes up to 50+ a week), they have developed an excellent working rapport. So, the asking out has turned into a joke; “So, Nat? How about it? You and me, Friday night? Come on, one day, I am going to break you!” he would tease. To which she would reply with a laugh, “No, no! I don’t date people at work!”. What starts to happen is the justification narrative in Nat’s head. She starts to question her morals and rules.

She asks herself, “Why don’t I date people at work? It’s not like anything has happened before. I mean, he’s handsome, smart, we work well together, he makes me laugh.

What if this could turn into something amazing? And even if it doesn’t work out, we are both mature adults. I am sure we could end things amicably and not let it affect our professional relationship.”

So, the next time he asks her out, to his surprise, she says, “You know what? Yes! Let’s go out.” He quickly takes advantage and suggests the upcoming Friday, at 7 o’clock. “I’ll pick you up at 7! I know a great little place to eat.”


Friday rolls around, he picks her up, and they have a wonderful evening together. He is a perfect gentleman; he opens doors for her, pulls out her chair, waits for her to take the first bite, makes her laugh, conversation flows naturally and easily.


Later on, he drives her home, and he doesn’t even try and kiss her. He simply pulls up to her house and says, “Thank you, Nat, for letting me take you out. I had a great time, and I hope we can do it again sometime.”


She says to him, “Well, it’s only 9:30, we don’t work tomorrow. Would you like to come in and have a drink?”


He accepts her offer.

Inside, she shows him around the place and tells him to make himself comfortable. “I’m going to run upstairs quickly and change into jeans and a t-shirt. Please make yourself at home, and I’ll be right back.”

She heads upstairs, changes, and then makes her way into the bathroom to wash her face. As she finishes washing her face, she raises her head to look in the mirror, where she sees him in the reflection, standing in the doorway, staring her down.

She has no idea how long he’s been standing there, but her intuition immediately goes off that something is very wrong. She turns around and quickly has her hands up in a passive stance and asks him, “Hey, what’s up? Did you need something?” He says nothing but begins to walk towards her, to which she asks, “Hey, how can I help you, man? What do you need?” He continues towards her and has now cornered her in the bathroom against the glass shower.

He grabs her wrists hard and pushes her aggressively against the shower door, restricting her spine, severely limiting her options of quick defense and says to her, “You know why you brought me here, bitch? You’ve been teasing me at work for the last six months!” What has he just told her, based on behavior, body language, and words? “I’m going to rape you now.”

There is a significant size difference between the two of them. Nat is about 5’5, 120lbs, in great shape, but he is 6’1” and around 180lbs. The odds weren’t good.

Nat had been training with Rich for about a year and a half at this point, so she understood the de-escalation rules of always being friendly, don’t provoke them, or tell them they’re wrong.


Using the strategy of destruction and deception to establish the element of surprise Nat replied with. She responds to him and says, “Well yeah, stupid! But do you want to do it here on the cold, hard bathroom floor? Or do you want to go into the bedroom where it’s more comfortable?”


His immediate reaction is that of confusion; “Huh? Really?” he says, having loosened his grip on her wrists and weight into her, allowing her spine to become unrestricted from the shower doors.


“No!” she says and immediately throws a well-placed knee right into his groin, making him buckle forward.


Out comes Nat’s palm strike, right under his chin. She knocked him out cold, broke his jaw, and severed the tip of his tongue. She ran out of her house, went to her neighbors, and immediately called the police.


The police show up and arrest him as he has now come to and (naturally), denies everything. He claimed they were getting intimate, but Nat went crazy and attacked him.


Since there are no witnesses, whom do they believe?

Police do their due diligence and investigate.

They check into Nat’s life with a fine-toothed comb. The police are interviewing co-workers, ex- boyfriends, friends, and any other men in her life. “Does she make it a habit of knocking men out? Has she ever been violent? Any warning signs?” to which all said no, she was great, no warning signs or anything off about her. She was the consummate professional in all aspects of her life.

They also investigated him. It didn’t take them long to discover he had a sealed juvenile delinquent record — multiple counts of assault, sexual assault, theft, and more.

He was charged and sentenced to 3 years but was out even sooner for good behavior.

Nobody heard from him again, but hopefully, this criminal record has assisted somewhat on keeping him away from as many women as possible.

Feel free to send us an email with any questions or comments you have.

CONTACT US

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Norman’s Story
  • Nat’s Story

Recent Comments

    Archives

    • March 2020

    Categories

    • Uncategorized

    Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org

    Footer

    logo stars

    Reach out

    info@studyofviolence.org

    Connect

    instagram

    Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

    Richard Dimitri

    Born in 1969, Richard Dimitri began his martial arts training in 1975. By the age of 21, he’d acquired instructor certifications and black belts in several forms of martial arts, combative, and self-defense disciplines. This martial arts education led him into various careers spanning over two decades in the fields of private, public and corporate security, surveillance, countersurveillance, bodyguarding for high-profile clients in Canada, the US, Europe, and Mexico.

    Richard is the Chief Architect at Study of Violence. Today Richard focuses on teaching and evolving his Masterclasses, specifically designed courses diving deeper into the applications of Violence Prevention and Defense tactics.

    – Those concerned or at risk.

    – Anyone who has been previously victimized.

    – Those who want to implement the information and training methods into their curriculums, courses, classes, workshops, lectures, seminars, etc.

    Many of the deep dive courses are application based. For more information please fill out the form on the link below.

    See if you qualify for Richard’s course.

    Pamela Armitage

    Born in 1979, Pamela Armitage grew up in the dance and modeling industry in Alberta, Canada. She began teaching ballet and jazz at 16 years old, first as a teacher’s assistant, then on her own at the age of 18. Along with various dance and baton clubs, she was a long-time instructor with Chairtease Dance studios in Red Deer, Alberta. In 1999, she was hired by Mode Models to lend her experience to the talent and new model development divisions, teaching new girls the ropes of the industry. This experience in both the dance and modeling world provided Pam with deep insights into the unfortunate victimization that occurs in both sectors.

    Pam is the Chief Impact Officer at Study of Violence, certified by both Richard Dimitri’s Self Defense Services and Safe International.

    She is also an RYT200 Certified Yoga Teacher with a particular focus on Trauma Sensitive Yoga, continuing her research and development into trauma and its effects. Since 2015 she works with sufferers of trauma: PTSD, victims of sexual assault, and addicts.

    Jason Donison

    Jason is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Don X — a boutique angel investment firm focused on the technology sector. He’s been involved in numerous industries, including Fintech, IT, Real Estate, Construction and Hospitality.

    Known for his innate ability to identify major consumer trends and decipher exactly how to capitalize on them, Jason is uniquely able to take a project from visualization to actualization, crafting distinctive, valuable visions.

    Jason has always had a passion for security, whether protecting business operations or one’s physical safety. In 2019, Jason founded Study of Violence alongside good friend for 20+ years and former instructor, Richard Dimitri, with the sole mission to provide the world peace of mind through the education of violence.

    Alejandra Ladines

    My name is Alejandra Ladines and I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. I grew up in a very dangerous area of the country, and from a young age, I was exposed to a lot of violence. I spent most of my time in the streets where fights were common and violent situations were unavoidable.

    I have always been the type of person to be quick to respond and fight back -mostly by punches- which got me into many unnecessary fights. I never really had a clear understanding of what self-defense actually meant until I met Rich Dimitri through Benjamin Myers, my strength and conditioning coach during my senior year of high school, who invited Rich Dimitri to Ecuador to train with us and teach us self-defense techniques.

    Self-defense turned out to be the contrary of the idea I had in mind all those years. I was all about learning how to fight, but Rich taught me that self-defense was more about awareness and de-escalation. Being aware of my surroundings (places, objects, noises, people, body language, etc) was extremely important when it comes to identifying violent situations, avoiding them and finding your way out of it. I am not trying to look for a fight, but rather avoid it by using de-escalation tools such as talking the other person out of it. As he always said: “most of the time there are just good people having a bad day “. There are so many more things I learned from Rich; however, the most important lesson I learned that changed my life was that self-defense does not equal violence, but rather self-defense was avoiding violence before it happens.

    Annette Helberg, Scotland

    Richard’s approach to teaching self-defense is unique, honest and holistic. As a survivor I have been lucky to have found great coaches who have been able to impart a solid foundation of the psychological and physical impact of violence which has been invaluable. What Richard adds beyond that is an in-depth understanding of antisocial violence, sexual predators, and physical self-defense skills that anyone can learn and effectively execute in a high stress situation. His approach to listen to his student, his understanding of the subject matter and his experience of dealing with PTSD triggers and episodes for me has been transformative on many levels and is something I have not seen elsewhere.

    Royal Montreal Regiment

    Dimitri’s approach to hand-to-hand combat is refreshingly practical, realistic and effective. He is definitely a dynamic instructor with TONS of personal experience and stories that really shows how much his fighting techniques work.

    – Captain (Chaplain) Rici Be at the Royal Montreal Regiment

    Mia von Loga, Germany

    Founder of BeyondDefence

    Supreme. enRICHing. Human. Encountering Rich both as a human and a teacher was an incredible experience. From the perspective of a survivor it is deeply nourishing to experience a male supporting Women this dedicated and humble. Seldom have I met a human being as deeply connected with and embodying the importance and power of emotional understanding, foremost empathy. While I teach self-defense as self-care, learning from Rich hit the nail for me. It completed what I was looking for to share with my students. I couldn’t have asked for a better master to learn from, his knowledge, skills and understanding are phenomenal and have boosted my own teachings of self-defense to the top level. Gratitude and blessings to you, Richard.

    • Courses
    • Team
    • Contact Us