In February, a 44-year-old Oran woman managed to escape serious injury after a man wearing black and a ski mask abducted her from the parking lot of the West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau.

Although police said the attack was an isolated event, such attacks do occasionally occur in Cape Girardeau.

Because of safety concerns, the Cape Girardeau Police Department has teamed with instructors from the Lee H. Park Martial Arts Institute to offer a self-defense class for women. The class, which will be held on six consecutive Tuesday nights beginning April 28, is designed to help women learn basic techniques to guard against violence from a domestic dispute or during an encounter with a stranger.

"We've had a lot of calls from women wanting to learn self-defense," said Bettie Knoll, a victim advocate for the police department.

The purpose of the class, Knoll said, is to give women information and insight into defending themselves so they might feel safer and more secure. In addition to four sessions on self-defense, the seminar will also have sessions on victims' rights and on home security and awareness.

Black belts Robert Bullock and Ralph Hendrickson, the instructors for the self-defense sessions, between them have more than 25 years of experience in martial arts. Their main area of expertise is in Hapkido, a form like judo that teaches free fighting, blocking and takedown techniques.

Bullock said the goal of the sessions will not be to teach women how to go toe-to-toe with an assailant but how to get away from an attacker.

"Survival is ultimately what you want, to be unharmed physically," he said.

It is nothing Bullock has had to face himself. At 6 feet 4 inches and 250 pounds, few people challenge him.

However, a friend of his -- a petite 5-foot woman -- was once attacked near her apartment in Cape Girardeau. The woman was able to throw the man over her back and escape into her apartment.

The first step in self-defense is learning how not to become a victim, Knoll said, and the first step in not becoming a victim is being alert to the possibility.

"Everybody says, 'It's not going to happen to me,' but everybody has to be prepared to be a victim," she said.

Each year women nationwide are the victims of more than 4.5 million violent crimes, including about a half a million rapes or other sexual assaults, says the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly 30 percent of the violent crimes against women by lone offenders were perpetrated by intimates -- husbands, former husbands, boyfriends or former boyfriends.

The victims' friends or acquaintances committed more than half the rapes and sexual assaults, intimates committed 26 percent and strangers were responsible for about one in five, Justice Department statistics show.

About 20 percent of the lone-offender attacks against women involved a weapon. Strangers used weapons 30 percent of the time compared to 18 percent for intimates. However, women were injured by intimates in 52 percent of the attacks compared to 20 percent of the attacks by strangers.

Although attacks on women are not nearly as frequent a problem in Southeast Missouri communities as they are in metropolitan areas such as St. Louis or Chicago, everyone still needs to be prepared for the possibility of being a victim of an attack, Knoll said.

Mental preparation is as much a part of self-defense as physical preparation. "You have to pay attention, to be alert, to be attune to yourself," Knoll said.

"A person who walks with her shoulders slumped and her head down, not paying attention to her surroundings, is more likely to become a victim," she said.

"One way not to be a victim is to have the ability to be an aggressor, to be a person on the offensive," Bullock said.

TO ENROLL

Self-defense classes for women begin April 28 and will be held on six consecutive Tuesday nights. For information or to register call 335-3848.