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In this page I will insert any valuable information submitted by guests to educate parents and their children on how to avoid becoming a victim to persons like Joseph P. Smith. This is an open forum, so please send me your thoughts, all will be accepted and posted. Send me your inputs via email, I will insert your comments, your first name and city or State.

Hi Michael,

Ran across your website for Carlie. Nice! Very nice! I'm not sure I necessarily agree with your views on the Death Penalty, but I certainly understand why your views are what they are, and admittedly I know if Carlie were my daughter, I'd make sure her perpetrator received nothing less than death for his insane actions. So I don't really debate the death penalty with people as I myself have a rather hypocritical view of it, as well as feelings to support both sides of the issue. I guess I mainly get hung up on where the death penalty is concerned with regard to God (our Lord Jesus Christ). But anyway, this is not really why I decided to write to you today.

The reason I decided to write to you is because I have some safety tips and guidelines that you might be interested in posting on your website; that I feel are imperative to educate your children to keep them safe. I have two daughters, and I am a Co Leader of a girl scout troop, and I am probably one of the most paranoid, worried Moms you could ever meet. When I was in high school, the sister of a friend of mine was kidnapped, raped and killed. During that school year, a string of similar murders were happening to young girls in high school, all over the county I lived in. I myself was caught up in the midst of my girlfriend's sister's abduction, and unbeknownst at the time, my cousin that I was and still am very close with, was also in the midst of this string of murders. It wasn't discovered until almost a decade later who my friend's sister's killer was, but they did catch him. It turns out he was some sort of delivery person for a photography studio that took the Senior Portraits for all the High Schools. I guess that's how he chose his victims? We didn't find out until almost 10 years later that lying next to the body of a young girl that was missing, that went to a high school only 3 miles away, was a picture of my cousin's Senior Portrait - - with blood all over it. Because the actual victim bared close resemblance to my cousin, the Police theorized that the killer must've intended to get my cousin, however that particular day it was raining really hard, and the killer wore prescription eyeglasses, (thus he didn't see very well without his glasses) and my cousin ended up getting picked up from school as opposed to taking the same path home along the train tracks that the other girl took home. PRETTY DAMN SCARY STUFF HUH??? It's never left my mind - - the fear of knowing someone up close and personal who was the victim of such a violent and heinous crime. My friend's sister was killed on Easter Sunday, she was raped and mutilated and found in a canyon about 5 miles from my house. At that time, schools weren't in the habit of offering counseling to the students or anything like that. It still blows my mind to think of that terribly dark and scary time of my life, even after 20 years. So this is the premise of my total protective nature with my daughters and with pretty much any child I can get to listen to me. Most of my daughter's friends parents think I'm hilarious about the lengths I will go to make sure my daughters (and their daughters) are safe. In my opinion, you can never be too safe. You can never be too careful. Having said that, I wanted to offer you some useful and pretty much INHERANT practices every child should know about when it comes to safety and the concept of "strangers".

First of all it is imperative to impart to your child WHAT A STRANGER IS? And you know Michael......a stranger is not necessarily someone you don't know their name - - A STRANGER IS SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW WELL ENOUGH TO FULLY TRUST!!!!!! What do I mean by Fully Trust? I think it's important to keep things simple for children. The younger they are, the simpler the code of safety has to be. They don't have much time to think about all the safety tips told to them, to decide what to do when faced with potential danger. They only have a few seconds Michael. Just a few seconds and then it's pretty grim after that. So in that few seconds they need to make the right choice that could save their life. Let me backtrack a bit here.........first of all..........DRIVE YOUR CHILDREN EVERYWHERE!!!!!!! For God's sake, it's no secret we live in a fucked up, dangerous, sexually exploitive society. Carlie isn't the first. And bless her heart, she unfortunately won't be the last. It's not like something out of the ordinary occurred in her murder. Except of course the videotape, however everything else that happened leading up to her abduction, rape and killing has happened over and over again in the past. Why was that young girl walking home???? Why was she walking home ALONE??? Why do we live in a country in which having a vehicle is of primary importance to get to our jobs in a timely fashion, yet we don't see those vehicles as a necessity in transporting our children safely from one place to the next? If you can't pick them up or drop them off; I guess they just can't go!!!! Period!! And public transportation is just as bad as walking. We don't like to say things like that out loud, but come on, it's the damn truth! Public transportation is not safe!!! Most of the people who use it either use it during the day for their jobs, in which case, our children have no need for it anyways. But when it's our children that are potential customers, what time of day or night is it? Not busy working hours. Usually it's later than that, and as uncool as this may sound, who do you think uses public transportation during the middle of the day and in the night? The people who haven't got a vehicle, and seemingly don't have jobs either if they're riding during the afternoon. Is this who you want your daughter sitting next to on Bart? The bus? No thank you. At $2.78 a gallon for gas, I'll pay that cheap price and inconvenience myself just a little and haul my own kids around hither and tither.

This brings me to HOW CLOSE IS SAFE? I have taught my daughter that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON ANY GROWN UP SHOULD COME WITHIN REACHING DISTANCE TO HER EVER!!!! Adults should know better than to think it's alright to just walk up to kids close enough to be able to touch them. Any decent adult would understand a child freaking out, backing off, whatever, should the occasion arise that they are approaching your child with good intentions, only to find them highly guarded and defensive. My daughter knows that it doesn't matter if it's an old lady crossing the street and needing help.........SORRY.........A GROWNUP CAN HELP HER JUST FINE. It's important to tell your kids that men and women are equally untrustworthy as strangers and that even if a woman pulls up in her car along side you on the street that they should haul ass and not look back.

I can go on and on, but I suppose before I do, I should stop here and see if you even want to know more. I'm sorry for rambling. The idea of a child being victimized makes me sick Michael. They are so helpless and naive and vulnerable and above all KIDS ARE TOO DAMN TRUSTING! They are afraid to offend adults by acting on their ambivalences they may have with them. So they go with them willingly, trustingly......like Carlie did......she obviously was taken away against her will, but did she scream? Did she kick? Did she avoid confrontation with this asshole altogether by either turning around upon seeing him and running away as fast as she could? Did she take a second to stop and listen to him? She didn't do any of these things. She may have been scared, but the poor child didn't make a fuss about her murderer leading her by the arm and taking her away to violate her and strangle her. The sick son of a bitch!! I say cut his balls off personally. But that's just me I guess. Death is too nice for this guy. Letting him live with what he did all his life is more torturous. Living without his balls would be pretty harsh too wouldn't you say? ;-)

I have to ask myself, why was that little girl walking ALONE and in an empty parking lot??? Why did she think this was safe to do? It's not her fault she didn't know it wasn't safe. Is it her parents fault? I don't blame them for not knowing; they are only human. They too were once young trusting vulnerable children. We face these issues with crimes against children because we fail to impart a message to our children that the world is not a safe place for them to be alone in. Some might say you raise your child in fear. I disagree. Mine are empowered with the knowledge I give to them. They are confident about their surroundings. They feel safe going places. They don't worry about Monsters in their closets. They stay clear of the Monsters who live next door. You can't separate your children from all the demons in the world. There are so many that go virtually undetected. As is the case of Joseph Smith. You can't determine who's good and who'd bad ever!!!! All you can do is give your child every tool possible to ensure that they stay out of harms way of the bad ones; until they are grown up enough to truly understand the dangers of the world and how to protect themselves.

If you are interested in these philosophies.......I will be glad to share them all with you. If not, I understand and I wish you well.

Your heart is very obviously in the right place Michael. God Bless you for that!

Angel