After ten years of being in a relationship that was killing her, Kimmie was done. The man with whom she’d spent the last decade had just raped and beaten her, leaving her with a shattered right cheekbone and a collage of nightmarish memories.
But the damage went deeper than torn tissue and broken bone; the person Kimmie had once been – a woman with a master’s degree in education, eager to share her gift for teaching with others – was no longer visible among the distorted, swollen mess.
Kimmie, whose name has been changed for this article, had seen the downward spiral picking up momentum. But, caught up in its force, she felt helpless against it. “It was great in the beginning. And then he became more and more controlling. He knew how to make me feel like I was going crazy,” she says.
Kimmie broke free once. But the man found her, put a gun to her head, and took her home. Then he locked her behind bars made not of iron but of cruel words, threats of violence, and poison. “He took away my keys, my bank cards, and my phone. I had no way to free myself. And then he started giving me prescription medication,” she says.
A friend intervened. When Kimmie sent him a photo of her face after the beating, he took it to the authorities. An arrest was made, a guilty verdict was delivered, and a sentence was handed down.
Kimmie’s journey of restoration didn’t end with the slam of real iron bars as a prison guard shut away the man who’d abused her. She was too overwhelmed to begin picking up the pieces of her life on her own. So the same friend introduced her to a man who could help: Kim Demby, the founder and owner of W.I.T.S. (Women’s Intelligence Training Services) Academy.
W.I.T.S. training
Physically, Demby makes an intimidating first impression. Although of average height, all five feet 11 inches of him appear to be made of muscle, bone, and tightly coiled energy. But he also has a disarming smile, which he makes a point of using when he shakes someone’s hand.
Demby started W.I.T.S. for the sole purpose of saving lives. While he does teach his clients to physically defend themselves, he doesn’t bill W.I.T.S. as self-defense training; rather, he says his mission is to teach people to identify threats in advance and implement strategies to avoid them.
“All forms of self-defense include tactics for overcoming physical threats. But that puts you in a position in which you’re already a victim,” Demby says. “I teach people to see the ways in which they could become a victim and how to steer clear of those situations.”
Demby begins with intelligence training. W.I.T.S. offers programs ranging from domestic violence, abduction, and rape awareness to the psychology of survival, staying safe on a college campus, and identifying bullying. He also teaches safety classes for the workplace, drivers, and travelers. Demby begins with the mind because it’s the most important tool for protection a person has. It’s also where resistance due to trauma takes root. By the time Kimmie came to Demby, she’d already built a brick wall around herself, and she wasn’t letting anyone through, especially a stranger.
“The first thing I did was peel back the layers of damage,” Demby says. “Once she began to open up and understand why she was here, she started to love what we were doing.”
After a person is comfortable, Demby introduces the W.I.T.S. fighting system. Developed by Demby, it uses what he calls target point impact strikes designed to neutralize an assailant. “You engage to disengage,” Demby says.
Even when discussing the fighting system, Demby says W.I.T.S. is intelligence training, not a self-defense school. “I don’t train people physically; I train their minds,” he says. “I put files in there, like a computer, and you load those files when you need them. If someone comes at you with a bat, you’ll know that’s an impact weapon attack. Your eyes will see what’s happening, and your subconscious will load the file you need so you can respond appropriately.”
Demby says knowledge is more empowering than physical strength. “When you have knowledge, you don’t panic, you identify what’s happening and take charge of the situation,” he says.
While most forms of martial arts consist of rigid techniques, Demby designed the W.I.T.S. fighting system to be malleable. This allows him to tailor the program for each individual, regardless of the person’s age or degree of physical ability. “My youngest student was eight; my oldest was 69,” Demby says. “W.I.T.S. can adapt to who and where you are. What I teach a teenager is different from what I teach a woman in her sixties.”
Since each client’s experiences are unique, each person has specific needs outside the scope of the intelligence training and fighting system. W.I.T.S. addresses these issues through a variety of services. From victim relocation, to changing someone’s identity, to escorting a client to court, Demby will go to considerable lengths to safeguard and support his clients.
“Victims of domestic violence have to go to court and face the person who beat them,” he says. “That’s one of the scariest things an abused woman has to do. But she doesn’t have to do it alone.”
Demby’s path
Demby doesn’t just have a mind for his work; he also has a heart for it. This heart took its present shape following a devastating event in his life.
Born one of nine siblings, Demby grew up in Washington, D.C., and was a physically small child. Believing this placed him in the shadows of his three older brothers, he felt compelled to try to outshine them. His mother, a watchful and intuitive woman, told him he didn’t have to try to shine because he was already a bright light. “You’ll find your own path,” he recalls her saying.
Demby’s path was martial arts. He started learning Isshin-Ryu karate at the age of six; by 14, he was testing for his first black belt. As an adult, Demby did intelligence work for the federal government. He eventually switched to protection services, working first for the government and then in the civilian sector. This brought him to Chattanooga during the Wheyland Foundry strike in the late 1990s. Demby’s résumé also includes starting a bouncer school and a body guard school, and developing the training program for each one. A zealous believer in doing things right, Demby required his student bouncers to undergo 30 hours of in-depth training, and successfully lobbied Tennessee and Georgia lawmakers to require bouncers to be certified.
“I have years of experience doing these things,” he says. “I didn’t get my information from a book; I made mistakes, I found out what works and what doesn’t work, and then I wrote the book.”
If Demby could change one chapter of his story, it would be the death of his sister, who committed suicide after being brutally victimized twice. “My sister was abducted and then raped for three days. They caught the guys, but they didn’t want to go to trial, so they tried to convince my sister to say she put herself out there,” Demby says. “One guy got six months; another got less than a year; another struck a deal and did 11 months and 29 days.
“A year later, my sister started seeing her high school sweetheart. After he raped her, she took her own life. She couldn’t go through all of that again.”
The seeds of W.I.T.S. are planted in the soil of this crushing loss. Moved not just to tears but also to action, Demby began taking courses that would teach him about the mentality of a victim. Sometimes, he was the only man in the room. “I wanted to understand how someone who was full of life could have their soul ripped out of them,” he says.
Eventually, Demby created a training program for women. He initially called the endeavor Defensive Protective Instructional Training, and taught at private high schools, colleges, and wherever else people were willing to absorb his instruction. Even then, with his emphasis on self-defense techniques, Demby taught others how to avoid becoming a victim. “I would go to a high school before its prom and talk with the girls about drinking and date rape,” he says. “I wanted to make a difference.”
Demby launched W.I.T.S. in Chattanooga in 2012. Located at 4341 Ringgold Road, he continues to teach women of all ages not only how to defend themselves, but also how to never have to defend themselves. This training made all the difference in Kimmie’s life.
“There were days when I prayed to die; I was sick, and I couldn’t do it anymore,” Kimmie says. “But Kim kept at it, and he eventually started a fire in me.”
Kimmie excelled. When she graduated from core training, Demby asked her to become an instructor. Now Kimmie uses her education, her life experiences, and the knowledge and the skills she learned from Demby to begin to break down the brick walls other women have placed around themselves. Her face bears no traces of the beatings she suffered, or of the woman who no longer wanted to live. Instead, she radiates strength, and her eyes contain an inextinguishable fire that’s spreading to others as she helps them take their first steps on their journey of restoration.
“Kimmie has been through things no one can recreate,” Demby says. “Other women have gone through similar things. Kimmie can show them how get through it.”
Kimmie returns the favor of kind words to her mentor. “Kim has a passion for serving this community. He’s trying to give people a fighting chance in a chaotic world,” she says.
The man who abused Kimmie is no longer in jail. But Kimmie has no intention of becoming his, or anyone’s, victim again. She picks up a black marker and writes, “I’m fighting back” on her left hand. Her eyes brighten. “You can get out,” she says. “You don’t have to stay.”
Learn more about W.I.T.S. Academy at customdefenseclasses.com.
To see more photos, pick up a copy of this week's Hamilton County Herald.