Samantha Runnion and Her Little Friend Are Heroes as Is Erica Pratt
- © Michele Toomey, PhD • July 22, 2002

Samantha did everything she had learned to do to protect herself. She screamed and kicked, she told her friend to go tell her grandmother, she scratched her attacker. She put up a valiant fight, this five year old girl, against a vicious grown man. Her little friend ran and got help, gave an incredible description of the attacker, and helped catch him. What other requirements for heroism do we have?

Then there is seven year old Erica Pratt, kidnapped from her grandmother's front yard kicking and screaming. Locked in a basement of an abandoned building, with her mouth and eyes, wrists and ankles bound in duct tape, she gnawed herself free, broke out of the basement and broke a window to call for help. She saved herself, this brave seven year old. Little children responded to her cries and called the police. They are also heroes in their own way, Erica needed their help to get free and they gave it. She and Samantha, Samantha's little friend, and Erica are child heroes. Unfortunately, Samantha is a fallen hero, but a hero nonetheless.

I think these three little girls should be honored by the President with a medal of heroism. We need to recognize the bravery of these children and the inspiration they provide us.

Not so, fourteen year old Elizabeth Smart or her nine year old sister. They are victims of violence but not heroes. They seem to have fallen into the role of good little girls who are more mannerly and sweet and don't have the aggressive energy available to them in a dangerous situation. Trusting and protected, they aren't taught to fight for themselves. This harsh reality speaks to the issue of wanting our girls to be "ladylike". Who knows how their attacker would have been viewed by them if they were used to thinking more aggressively. Of course, Elizabeth's abductor had a gun, and that changes things, adding real danger of death to the scene, but the question still remains, where was any aggressive response to the abduction? Elizabeth only asked if she could put on her shoes. We need to be so saddened by this story and so horrified that it could have occurred in the first place. These two sisters are innocent victims, innocent, indeed.