‘Rad’ Couple is Empowering Houston’s Women and Children

Rice’s Jim and Sandra Baylor are a dynamic duo. They don’t don capes or possess superpowers like Superman or Wonder Woman; rather, they are armed with information that can save lives, empower women to protect themselves, and give children plans to stay safe.

Jim, a sergeant with the Rice Police Department, and Sandra, coordinator in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, teach RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) classes for women and radKIDS (Resist Aggression Defensively) classes for children. Both are nationally based programs designed to build awareness, self-esteem, confidence, and skills so that participants might recognize, avoid, and escape violent situations.

Dressed in full-body protective gear, Sgt. Jim Baylor “assaults” a RAD student while class instructor Sandra Baylor observes. The mock attacks are designed to give students the chance to practice the defensive skills they’ve learned. The protective gear allows the students to perform those skills at full force. Jim recently was named Aggressor of the Year for work in these practice drills.

For their dedication to RAD programs, Jim and Sandra have received numerous awards, most recently at the annual RAD conference in San Antonio, where they were named radKIDS Instructors of the Year. Jim also was named Aggressor of the Year for his work acting as an attacker in the classes. He wears protective gear—a padded body suit, headgear, and elbow and knee pads—so students are able to use full force in practicing their newfound defensive skills. “Jim really gets beat up,” Sandra notes, “even though he’s protected by the suit.”

The Girl Scout Council gave the couple the 2004 Starfish Award after they traveled 100 miles each day for two weeks to teach violence-prevention skills to more than 50 girl scouts. “They were so impressed with the results,” says Sandra, “that they asked us to teach the class for five weeks during their summer camp.”

Jim brought RAD for women to the Rice campus in 1995 as an accredited kinesiology course. Later, RAD was offered to Rice employees, and Sandra took advantage of the opportunity. “I saw how it was like therapy for women who had been survivors of domestic violence, robbery, or abduction,” she recalls. “I decided then that I wanted to be a part of this.”

At that time, most RAD instructors were police officers. Sandra, who didn’t yet know Jim, wrote a letter to him expressing her interest in becoming involved with the program. Sandra was accepted as an instructor in 1997 after completing a 30-hour certification course and then taught the RAD kinesiology class for several years. In October 1998, she was certified to teach advanced RAD, and in July 2001, she became a radKIDS instructor. “That’s where my passion really lies,” she says. “The things that we teach children in radKIDS help them recognize and avoid the dangers in their world.”

Last summer, Sandra became one of three RAD for Men instructors in Texas. “It’s RAD from the other side of the fence,” she says of the program, which teaches men techniques to protect themselves from becoming victims as well as anger-management skills to prevent abusive behavior.

In every class they teach, Sandra says the participants are changed forever. Adds Jim, “People say that when they encounter a dangerous situation, all they think of is exactly what we’ve taught them in RAD. Being able to help people in this way is really indescribable.”

—Lindsey Fielder