Through humor, role-playing and personal interaction with the audience, a husband-and-wife team of karate black belts informed an enthusiastic crowd of the seriousness of sexual assault at the “Hands Off … I’m Special” presentation Monday night.

Dan Lena and Marie Howard-Lena frankly discussed self-esteem, sexual assault, relationships and self-protection with an audience of about 600 students, mostly freshmen, in the Holmes Student Center’s Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

“Most attacks happen to freshman women,” Dan said, adding, “We’re not saying all men are rapists.”

The program was held at the beginning of the year to inform students, especially freshmen, “that date rape and sexual assault can happen and to give them a few options of getting out of it, if it happens,” said Laura Tichnor, president of Grant Towers Hall Council. The council sponsored the program along with the Campus Activities Board and the Residence Hall Association.

“The program lets them (students) know how they can protect themselves,” said Pat Schauer, the hall council’s vice president.

“This whole talk is about your rights,” Marie said. “Today, you decide you are going to go after what you want in your life and not let anyone stand in your way.”

The first part of the hour-and-one-half presentation focused on the “I’m Special” idea. Dan and Marie repeatedly voiced, “You are nature’s greatest gift and there’s no one else like you.” Anytime an audience member sneezed, the Lenas recited this phrase after first saying “God bless you.”

“We could tell you about the 100,000 assaults reported to the FBI each year or the fact that only one out of ten women actually report the rape,” Dan said.

“But we want to tell you that you have the ability to change the world,” Marie added. “No one has the right to take away your potential or rob the world of your greatness.”

A sexual assault damages a person’s outlook on life and affects future relationships, the couple said. Both Dan and Marie have learned this from past experiences they shared with the audience, focusing on the second aspect of the program, understanding and dealing with assaults.

Marie recalled four years of drugs and drinking that followed her brutal encounter when she was 15 years old. “I was a total waste and realized I couldn’t let him take control over my life anymore.” While hitchiking, she was picked up by a cocaine addict and driven to a remote area of Humboldt Park in Chicago.

For a period of over four hours, Marie was repeatedly assaulted. “I thought he was going to kill me,” she said.

She managed to grab the razor blade the attacker was using to cut cocaine. In fear for her life, she then cut his face from the eyeball down and struggled out of the car. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” said Marie, who kept the incident a secret and never received counseling.

Dan also did not seek help after his encounter. When he was 11 years old, he was dressed as a girl for Halloween and a man pinned him against a garage in a secluded area. Even when the man realized Dan was not a girl, he continued assaulting him until Dan kicked him and ran.

Dan and Marie met when she decided she needed to put her life together. She then started karate lessons at his studio.

Sexual assaults “are always turned around to make the victim look like a criminal,” Dan said. When Marie was attacked, the police imposed the guilt on her and failed to help since she was hitchhiking.

“If you were attacked, you shouldn’t feel ashamed because it was not your fault,” Marie said. “You weren’t ‘asking for it.’ If you submit to a sexual assault, it’s because you don’t know what else to do.”

“Possibly there was nothing you could do in your attack,” Dan said. “Many times self-defense isn’t available or appropriate.”

Dan and Marie provided options to protecting oneself when an assault is preventable. If the attacker is face to face with the victim, a kick and recoil to “where it counts” can be used. If the attacker comes from behind, the victim can use their leg to kick and scrape, elbow to jab, or fist to punch. Poking fingers into the attacker’s eyes also can be used as a defense.

“If you’re going to kick, kick low and hard. Do whatever you can and don’t give up,” Marie said. “In most cases, the attacker doesn’t think you can defend yourself.”

“Use whatever you have at your disposal,” Dan said. “You have many weapons without carrying weapons. Weapons are a false sense of power.”

Knives can be taken away and used against you, he said. They criticized using such devices as whistles, keys, horns, nun chukas or ugly sticks. “Your fingers are much better weapons,” Marie said.

They also criticized certain methods of getting out of a situation, like talking the attacker out of it or using reverse psychology. Since attackers want to dominate and humiliate, date rapes usually occur due to a lack of communication between the two individuals, they said.

“There’s a problem with communication and a difference in attitudes,” Marie said. “There’s differences in how guys and girls are brought up.”

“If guys don’t understand ‘no,’ you have to make them understand ‘no’ means ‘no,'” Dan said.

Sexual assaults come in many forms, and when the Lenas talk to young children, they point out differences between a good touch and a bad touch. They have presented the program for 11 years to colleges, high schools and groups across the country.

This was the couple’s third year visiting NIU and the audiences are growing. Schauer said the turnout “was phenomenal and bigger than we hoped.”

“They really made an impact on the students,” said James Brunson, Grant Towers area coordinator. “They presented an informative as well as positive view and planted a seed with the problem.”

By showing the students methods of self-defense and giving them “special” attention, Dan and Marie attempted to make the students “walk tall or don’t walk at all,” as Marie put it.