Who Speaks For the 1Touch Project, and Why Should We Care?

by Stephen Hanschu

From the Editor: Anyone who has been around the Federation long is familiar with Stephen. He is known as an artist, a former chapter president, and has served a number of times on his affiliate’s board of directors. He now is the president of the 1Touch Board of Directors, and it is in this capacity that he writes to warn people about associating with its former director, Stephen Nicholls. Near the end of this article, I will add comments made by Mr. Nicholls in response to the Braille Monitor seeking him out. First, here is what Stephen Hanschu has to say:

Many Federationists know the 1Touch Project organization through the self-defense seminars it has held at our national conventions. That is how I met the 1Touch Project. For most of us, these seminars were energizing. No one can teach or learn comprehensive self-defense in two hours. But these seminars did show that we, blind people, could learn to defend ourselves. We were shown basic principles of self-defense: how to recognize, avoid, leave, escape from, and defend ourselves from violence and unwanted attention.

For me, meeting 1Touch was life-changing. For years I attended every convention seminar that I could fit into my schedule. In 2017 I took the 1Touch Certification Course. Several months later I became a certified 1Touch coach and began teaching ongoing classes in metro Detroit. In the fall of 2019 I was asked to join the 1Touch Board of Directors, by Mr. Stephen Nicholls. Mr. Nicholls is the founder of the 1Touch Project, and he was the director at that time. Several weeks later I became the 1Touch Project president.

But from the moment I joined the Board of Directors, it became clear to me that things were not what they should be inside the 1Touch Project organization. Since much of this article will be critical of Stephen Nicholls, I want to state clearly that Mr. Nicholls did found the 1Touch organization. He worked very hard to link his name to the 1Touch Project so that one could hardly think of one without the other. When he asked me to become part of the board, I felt honored. I considered him to be both my teacher and friend. I looked forward to years of productive collaboration with him, having spent years furthering the organization’s mission, this mission being the creation and maintenance of a national organization whose purpose is to develop a practical system of self-defense for blind people, to develop teaching methods that are blind-friendly, and to certify instructors of this system. I continue to believe in this important mission; therefore, it is with the greatest sadness that I tell you that I have come to believe that, due to his own behavior, Mr. Stephen Nicholls has made it impossible to further this mission through the 1Touch Project. I further believe that continuing to associate myself with him would place my own reputation in jeopardy.

By March 2020 the 1Touch Board of Directors terminated Mr. Nicholls’s position as director, board member, and coach. They also severed any and all connection between himself and the 1Touch organization. Unfortunately, he continues to claim that he is still the director of the 1Touch Project. This preposterous behavior has forced us to release the following statement publicly. We believe it documents the true situation of the 1Touch Project.

PUBLIC STATEMENT

1. It has become apparent to the members of the Board of Directors of the 1Touch Project, Inc. that it is both desirable and necessary to publish a position statement regarding the status of the Organization. This necessity has been forced upon us by the former Executive Director and founder of 1Touch Project, Stephen Henry Nicholls.
2. The previous board of directors resigned their positions during 2019, more than one of them citing the conduct of Mr. Nicholls as pivotal to their decision to resign. Late in 2019 Mr. Nicholls approached Messrs. Handschu, Kociaba, and Levins with a request for each of them to support him by becoming members of the board of directors. Shortly after adopting these positions these new directors were again approached by Mr. Nicholls and asked, in the spirit of compassion, to authorize “reasonable living expenses.” The board voted to support Mr. Nicholls’ request for “reasonable living expenses” primarily on the basis of his statement to the individual members of the board that he was “owed” in the region of $40,000 in unpaid salary.
3. Shortly after acceding to the request from Mr. Nicholls, it became apparent to Messrs. Handschu, Kociaba, and Levins that they were operating without any formal documentation. Accordingly, soon thereafter, their positions were formally ratified by the signing of contracts empowering them as directors of the company
4. The board, now being properly constituted, ratified all decisions made during the informal period of engagement and proceeded to strengthen their number with the addition of two further directors in the persons of Mark Melonson and Richard Warner. It is worthy of note that Mr. Melonson previously terminated his involvement with 1Touch Project, Inc., due to the conduct of Mr. Nicholls as has been stated to the other members of the board of directors.
5. With the advent of the pandemic, the board decided to suspend all operations of the organization as it seemed at the time and indeed ultimately proved to be the case that face-to-face tuition or training would be impractical for some months to come
6. As part of the process of suspending operations, the board chose to undertake a high level audit of finances, looking primarily for outstanding matters that may have been inadvertently overlooked by the previous administration. Two things came to light almost immediately:
   1. The previous board of directors had taken its fiduciary responsibility seriously and had prudently chosen to suspend Mr. Nicholl’s pay until such time as the organization could afford to resume paying him. Mr. Stephen Nicholls was properly informed of this decision and as such there can be no suggestion of any salary being owed to him, as all financial compensation had been suspended.
   2. The money that had been present in the organization’s account only a few weeks previously was being eroded at an alarming rate. The board immediately instituted a comprehensive analysis of 1Touch Project, Inc., financial affairs.
7. Furthermore, the properly constituted board of directors resolved to remove Mr. Nicholls not only from its number but from any position of authority or employment with 1Touch Project, Inc. This resolution was made at the explicit request of Mr. Nicholls himself, to enable him to claim unemployment benefits in the State of California; furthermore, it was done with unanimous support from the board of directors.
8. The aforementioned financial analysis quickly identified the fiduciary malfeasance of Mr. Stephen Henry Nicholls in that he and he alone had all but drained the finances of 1Touch Project over the period of just three months from being granted “reasonable living expenses.” The extent of his misappropriation of not-for-profit funds for purposes other than “reasonable living expenses” including:
   1. Significant cash withdrawals in the order of 000’s (thousands) of dollars from a cash point in a bar local to his residence. The times showed that he was making multiple withdrawals on the same day separated by a few hours from within the same drinking establishment.
   2. Mr. Nicholls paid personal tax liabilities directly from 1Touch Project, Inc., funds.
   3. Mr. Nicholls paid administrative fines for the re-registration of an overseas company direct to the government of the United Kingdom, there being no relationship between 1Touch Project, Inc., and 1Touch Project CIC, a company registered in England and Wales.
   4. This constitutes Mr. Nicholls using 1Touch Project, Inc., funds to provide a vehicle for the maintenance in his sole name of a trademark for the use of the word 1Touch relating to printed or video training materials.
9. This document is being released to maintain the integrity of the history of the 1Touch Project, Inc. The board of directors acknowledges that Stephen Henry Nicholls founded 1Touch and demonstrated the vision to anticipate the need for self-defense training within the visually impaired community. We further acknowledge that he will always be the founder of this organization, but we must also state that Stephen Henry Nicholls is no longer associated with or in any way represents 1Touch Project, Inc., his conduct toward the organization having precluded any possible hope of reconciliation. We remain committed to provide a resource for signposting members of the visually impaired community to the most appropriate avenues for them to access self-defense training in the United States.
10. If any party wishes to see documentary evidence of any of the assertions contained within this document, that evidence will be provided upon receipt of a written request for the same.

MK Levins Esq.
Secretary

For and on Behalf of the Board of Directors, 1Touch Project, Inc.

This should answer the question of who speaks for 1Touch Project. Now the other question posed in the title, “Why does it matter.” Teaching self-defense is a serious business. You owe it to yourself to make sure that the person you choose to train with is of the highest competence and integrity. You need to be able to learn in a safe, secure environment. The public statement describes Stephen Nichols behavior toward the organization. There have also been repeated charges against him, including inappropriate behavior towards women, intoxication at 1Touch events, and other inappropriate treatment of students. Many of these charges are difficult to substantiate because the victims were unwilling to undergo formal or public investigations. Sadly, there have been too many charges over too many years to ignore safely. Stephen presents himself as an expert in “conflict resolution.” But the history of 1Touch under his leadership has been filled with conflict and controversy. We on the board were fooled, as were many others. We feel that we are ethically bound to warn the blind community that they should look very carefully before training with Mr. Nicholls or anyone who claims to be teaching under the 1Touch banner.

So where do you go if you are blind and want self-defense training? There is a lot to be said on this subject. It deserves an article of its own. Some of the questions are: What is the difference between a self-defense system and a martial art? How do you choose your instructor? Can blind people train in a regular martial arts school? If we can find training with sighted people, are there benefits training in a system designed for a blind person? I will try to answer the first question and leave the other ones for another article.

As our public statement said, 1Touch now has a two-part mission:

1. To maintain the 1Touch archives and tell the true history of this once important movement.
2. To be a referral agency for people who seek competent self-defense training.

In this spirit, I would refer all interested blind people to the SEED program. SEED stands for Safety Education Empowering Defense. SEED is a project within a larger organization named “Strive For You.” At this time Strive’s other focus is adaptive sports. There are also plans for a third project that will deal with advocacy, life skills, and reasonable accommodation training. It is the SEED program that I am talking about. It is very new. Our Director, Amy Wilson, is fond of reminding us that it is a work in progress. SEED promises to be a far more robust program for blind people’s self-defense than any of us have seen before. I can’t stress too much the fact that SEED is nothing like 1Touch. Comparing the two programs would be like comparing Waterford Crystal to Tupperware. It is an entirely new program.

There are two components in the SEED program. One is the safety education program. This deals with all the non-physical aspects of personal safety and defense. These include recognizing, avoiding, and de-escalating problematic situations; how to make your home secure; how to stay safe in school, in the workplace or the street, and lots more. The other component is the physical techniques that you need to protect yourself. To become a SEED certified self-defense instructor, you must take and pass both of these components. It is also possible to become a safety education instructor, in which case you need not study the physical aspects of the program. SEED has far higher standards for certification of instructors than any previous program. There are far more training opportunities than programs of the past have offered. Student instructors get far more support than has been available in the past. At this time SEED is a system created by the blind for the blind. Since the larger organization, Strive For You, is a cross disability organization, the system will be expanded to serve people with other disabilities in the future. That need not frighten anybody away. With the exception of two sighted instructors and one student, SEED is entirely blind. I have no doubt that it will be hugely beneficial to us as it develops. Having said all this, you will not be surprised that I am a student instructor in the SEED program.

In the beginning of this article I said that finding the 1Touch organization changed my life. That is true, even though it never lived up to its promise. We blind people are resilient. When 1Touch failed us, we buckled down and created SEED. I encourage all of you to join us in making it work. We are determined not to live in or repeat the mistakes of the past.

Editor’s Note: Given that this article focused so much on Stephen Nicholls and his relationship with 1Touch, the Braille Monitor called on him for comment. For this he expressed tremendous appreciation, saying that he has not been accorded such courtesy by others. He did not wish to write anything in response to the article, but he did ask that we acknowledge his response. We have paraphrased what he said:

Stephen Nicholls: I have been at this business for twelve years and have helped countless blind people. I am very hurt by the allegations that now surround my name, and I have not yet decided whether to contest their truthfulness or forget it and leave the project alone. I don’t mind accusations, but there should be due process, and this I have been completely denied. I still claim a relationship with 1Touch, an organization which is incorporated in Britain as a community interest company (CIC). The corporation I head is neither a for-profit nor not-for-profit corporation, but under British law its dividends are strictly limited. I find that the charges that have been leveled against me are extremely vague. I have never threatened or slandered anyone, nor am I guilty of any kind of sexual misconduct. Contrary to what is rumored, I have no problem with alcohol, and anyone caught drinking during a program or even while in 1Touch clothing was immediately removed from the program. If you plan to provide contact information for those who purport to be the board of directors for 1Touch, I ask that you do me the same courtesy and list my contact information. [Editor: This concludes his remarks.]

Those who want to contact the 1Touch Project can reach them at [email protected].

Those who wish to learn more about the SEED program can contact us at Amy Wilson [email protected].

You can reach Stephen Nicholls at [email protected].