Braxton Brown said goodbye to Escape School today and seamlessly entered into a new program that teaches children how to avoid abduction — Be a Safe Student.

It was a fitting way to end the old program and begin the new one, which started at Place to Play and introduced the new one at the same place.

“It’s the same program, same layout,” Brown said before the program at Belmont Elementary School began this morning. “We can do the same thing with less expense.”

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Brown presents Sexton the old banner.

The program uses the same acronym as Brown’s Be a Safe Senior program but focuses on children.

Brown handed Place to Play Director Freda Sexton the Escape School banners signed by the many children who have attended the program and then launched into the lesson.

“Mr. Brown’s been coming here since 2004,” Sexton said. “Each time we hear it again we hear something new.”

Said Brown: “We’ve been fortunate in the area and have not had any children abducted but it can happen in less than 90 seconds.”

One of the tenets in Be a Safe Student is to realize a stranger can be your salvation in abduction attempts. “A long time ago we taught you don’t talk to strangers. We’re erasing some of that and telling you a stranger is a person you don’t know. Sometimes a good stranger can aid and help you. I’m not telling you to be accepting of all strangers but sometimes they aid and help you.”

Brown demonstrated how a bike can be used to thwart abduction.

That’s why in Escape School and now in Be a Safe Student, Brown teaches that children should run and latch on to the nearest person should someone try to abduct them.

Abductors commonly use lures, Brown explained, lures such as the promise of a video game or toys when they see children walking unattended in a store.

Brown also went over holding on to your bike as tightly as possible when an abductor is trying to take you and using a move called the windmill technique to free yourself.

Three hundred of the 2,800 children abducted each year never return, Brown said. “The abductor wants to harm you, violate you and use you for his own purpose. No one has the right to touch you if you don’t want them to.”

For more information on Be a Safe Student contact Hockaday Funeral Home at 252-537-6144.