By Erin Wiltgen

chh@heraldsun.com; 419-6654

CHAPEL HILL -- Dark had long since fallen over the Pit on UNC's campus, some stragglers strolling to either dorms or library, cramming in a little more studying two days before 2009 spring exams. Bethany Corbin and her boyfriend at the time, walking towards Hinton James dorm, got in a fight.

Wanting to get out of the situation, Corbin declared she was leaving and asked a bystander to walk her home. Her boyfriend followed and shoved her. Terrified but eventually working up the courage, Corbin escaped and ran home.

"I was completely shocked," said Corbin, now a sohpomore and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. "Even though I knew what to do, I froze."

Now, eight months later, Corbin gears up to jumpstart her new program, Project Safe Girls, with a self-defense and awareness class as part of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA's middle school afterschool program. The class will run twice a week from Jan. 11 until May 1, concluding with a commencement featuring the girls in a demonstration in front of parents and friends.

"Before this, I had had the mentality of why don't these women leave," Corbin said. "Afterwards, I understood. I learned a lot of things about myself, my relationships, warning signs. Nobody had told me what a healthy relationship was. After I learned about that, I thought there were probably a lot of women out there like that."

Project Safe Girls focuses on educating girls about domestic violence, rape, assault, healthy relationships and general personal safety, ending with lessons in physical self-defense. Although the initial pilot program only reaches middle schoolers, Corbin said she hopes to expand the program to girls ages 5 to 23 as part of the project's relationship with The Realistic Female Self-Defense Company.

As an official division of The Realistic Female Self-Defense Company, Corbin's Project Safe Girls will teach alongside the company's founder, Anny Jacoby, as well as the company's self-defense instructors.

And Corbin's personal experience fuels her dedication to the project. In the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, she joined three different UNC student government committees dealing with campus safety before she solidified her idea for Project Safe Girls.

"We have this mandatory life fitness at UNC, and we have to take a mandatory art class," Corbin said. "But nothing teaches us self-defense and safety."

Jacoby said once a victim of assault can go through the healing process to become a survivor and then a success survivor, activism is only the next step.

"Most times, once you get to the point of that success survivor, that's when you become that advocate," she said. "It really kind of evolves itself."

Two grants through UNC pushed Corbin's idea off the ground, and a union with the YMCA's program set the ball rolling. But Corbin recognized what she lacked in official instruction; she began a search through defense agencies and martial arts programs to find a partner.

"I ultimately don't have the same amount of knowledge that Anny or someone else in the field would have," Corbin said. "I needed an instructor that had this knowledge already."

Corbin's eyes fell on Jacoby's company partially because it was based in Chapel Hill and also because it went beyond the brute fighting aspect.

"Anny's program incorporated the mental knowledge along with the physical knowledge," Corbin said. "I wanted to go with someone who had the curriculum established that was similar to the one I was trying to implement."

And Jacoby said she welcomed Corbin's idea with enthusiasm, embracing its practical yet passionate approach.

"I look at Bethany, and she is brilliant," Jacoby said. "She has outlets, and she knows how to go after it. I'm honored to be working with her."

And even though self-defense seems to be a natural instinct, Jacoby said that many women find ways to turn the blame of the incident back onto themselves. Corbin said she experienced such feelings herself.

"I can always say no one has the right to hurt me," she said. "But when I get in the situation, I always think, 'Well, maybe it was my fault.' "

But beyond learning to recognize harmful situations, a major part of Project Safe Girls, sometimes situations come down to being safe and knowing self-defense, Jacoby said. According to the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation, 2,239 rapes occurred in North Carolina in 2008, 83 percent of which were committed without weapons. About 25 percent of the rape victims were 16 to 20 years old, and 21.5 percent involved victims ages 11-15.

Orange County is ranked 27th for worst rape record out of 100 North Carolina counties, and Durham ranked seventh, according to the SBI.

"Those girls know that it's not right," Corbin said. "But if they can't fight back, they don't know what they could've done to prevent that situation."

In addition to the pilot program, Project Safe Girls will travel across the country with Jacoby's company, hoping to raise awareness nationwide. Corbin also seeks to start another semester-long program in a local school.

"We would eventually like to see every school have some sort of program that they offer students, whether it be optional or mandatory, that students can take to learn how to defend themselves," Corbin said.

And though only a sophomore in college, Corbin intends to see that goal to fruition, pursuing the program for the next two years and hopefully beyond, she said.

"I would love to do this every day of my life and make it my career," Corbin said. "That would be fantastic."