Producing message of safety for children
Producing message of safety for children Video aimed at combating child abduction 27 Jul 2006 By Deanna Sheffield News-Gazette Staff Writer For the 10th year, Grissom Funeral Home has assisted in a locally-produced video that will air in local schools and is designed to combat child abduction. Teresa Beverly, community service director for Grissom Funeral Home, said the company first began funding the Flee to be Free video “to help kids make good choices.” The video will be released to the school district this fall after editing has been completed. The release of Flee to be Free will coincide with a community awareness poster design contest at the elementary and middle school levels. Winners receive scholarships. “It’s a great program. We’re the only community in the state of Florida that has this type of program,” said Beverly. The program, which teaches youngsters to avoid abduction, was started after the abduction and murder of a 4-year-old girl by her neighbor in Intercession City. In response to the crime, Grissom decided to sponsor the program. Skits filmed this year include one in which a child is abducted during a fair at the Kissimmee lakefront after a mother leaves her son at a booth and tells him she will be right back, and a reenactment of County Commissioner Ken Shipley’s abduction as a child. Shipley was playing in a sand box in his backyard when a man reached over the three-foot fence in his backyard, snatched him and pulled him into his carriage house. Shipley, who was only 5 at the time, was able to get away by picking up a board from a nearby stack of firewood and hitting the man in the knee as hard as he could. The man ran but was later arrested. On one segment of the video, Shipley tells children and parents his story and urges them to fight back if they are ever faced with a similar situation. “I wish I had known what this video is teaching kids today,” Shipley said. “I decided to do the video because I wanted to share my experience with the kids. If it helps one kid get away from a predator, that’s great and if it can help 10, that’s even better.” Another skit shows a young girl who asked her mother to drop her off at The Loop for a movie, but she instead meets a man she had been corresponding with online. Beverly noted that the festival-themed skit was especially realistic. “You just can’t let your kids run loose,” she said. “It’s a prime opportunity for child predators to pick up a child and be gone before anyone notices.” All of the skits are filmed in local locations. Nearly 20 area children between the ages of 5 and 14 selected through an audition process are featured in the video. Police officers offer suggestions for topics that need to be addressed in each video, and the script is written by a 911 operator. “They see their classmates, places they know and they can relate to where they are,” Beverly said. “It’s very real.” Fourth-grader Kauhlin Pate has been an actor in the videos for the last five years. This year he played the brother of a child that was abducted and can mostly be seen playing in the background. But last year he played the part of a young boy who is abducted after he accepts a stranger’s offer of some ice cream. “That was in the video. It’s not for real because I’m smarter than that,” Kauhlin said. Kauhlin said helping to make the video is fun, noting he gets to play in the park after a filming. “One time I got to skateboard and another time I was a kid mowing the lawn and someone offered to let me see their car and I got abducted,” Kauhlin said. All three local law enforcement agencies partner to assist with security during the making of the video, and each agency also has a day when they are filmed during a mock search for an abducted child so that students understand the process for locating kidnapped children. The segments filmed with police officers feature a full-blown search including a helicopter. “These (videos) are very helpful. A lot of children love to watch them and enjoy learning from them,” said Cinthia Pabon, a neighborhood re-source officer for the Kissimmee Police Department. “We use this video often when we visit different after-school groups or summer camps. It’s a wonderful video.” Pabon said the police department typically shows the video and then follows it with a demonstration and advice on how to escape during an attempted, or actual, abduction and a question-and-answer segment. “The first time you watch the video it gives you goose bumps because it’s stuff that really happens,” Pabon said. Beverly estimated that the video costs nearly $1 million to produce, a large portion of which is made possible through additional area sponsors. About $100,000 of that is production costs absorbed by Grissom. Access Osceola provides the production, while 20/20 Media donates billboard space. “Everyone just puts in what they can of their time and their talents,” Beverly said. “It’s just amazing.” http://www.osceolanewsgazette.com/index.php?option=sports&task=viewarticle&sid=13318