Canoga Park Students Learn to Deal With the Violence in Their Lives

Her ex-boyfriend never beat her, Erica said, but he tried to control everything she did, commanding the teen-ager to wear the clothing he chose and forbidding her to see friends. Sometimes he grew so angry he shook her by the shoulders, she said.

Erica, a student at Canoga Park High School, was told by the director of an Orange County battered women’s shelter Wednesday that psychologists consider her former beau’s behavior the first step toward a violent relationship. She was smart and lucky to get out when she did, the counselor said.

Erica talked about her experience at a special student assembly on domestic violence organized by the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women, which hopes to hold similar assemblies for high school students throughout Los Angeles. The commission was established in 1975 to serve as an advocate for women in Los Angeles and to ensure full and equal participation of women in city government.

The assembly was moderated by Loyola Marymount University film professor Marilyn Beker, who said she herself had been a victim of domestic violence. It featured advice from three battered women who work or receive treatment at the women’s shelter, Human Options.

The two assemblies, videotaped for possible distribution to other schools, were the first of their kind at Canoga Park High, said Assistant Principal Nancy Delgado. The school agreed to host the program, she said, because it might help students deal with violence in their lives.

Organizers said the program sought to explain to boys as well as girls how to identify and protect themselves from physical and verbal abuse. According to figures provided by the commission, 3 million to 4 million American women are battered every year, and in 70% of homes in which wives are beaten, children are brutalized as well.

“Sometimes we don’t even know what violence is,” Beker said in her introduction. “But the violence in our lives has shaped the people we are.”

The purpose of the program, she told students, was to help them learn to recognize abusive behavior as harmful and teach them that there are ways to escape it or ease the emotional pain of the experience.

Beker asked how many of the students knew someone who had experienced violence in their home or in a relationship. About half a dozen responded in the first assembly of about 200 students, and about a dozen in the second group.

But dozens more nodded in recognition or interest as the discussion continued with Beker, the panel and Canoga Park students describing their experiences, and nearly all of them took literature on the subject at the program’s conclusion.

“I’ve seen it with my brother and his girlfriend,” one student said. “He hits her all the time and threatens to take her baby away.”

The student said that to most people, his brother appears to be mild. But he lashes out in private. “I’ve tried to stop him,” he said. “But I can’t. And then he calls me a traitor.”

Jessica, a resident of Human Options in her late teens who is the mother of a toddler, told the youngsters that she stayed with her abusive boyfriend even after he stabbed her in the abdomen when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. She didn’t leave him, she said, until the baby was 4 months old and she found herself with a butcher knife in hand, ready to kill him.

She urged students who are in abusive relationships to get out.

But one boy said he knew of a situation in which a woman tried to leave her abusive husband and had been killed by him. He wanted to know, “What do you do if you can’t get out, if he won’t let you get out?”

Phil Nassief, the district administrator for high schools in Canoga Park, said that because domestic violence touches the lives of many students, it is an appropriate topic for discussion. However, he said it was impossible to know how many such discussions have been held in Los Angeles and Valley schools, because they could be conducted at the discretion of teachers and principals.

Judy Chilnick, vice president of the Commission on the Status of Women, said the program at Canoga Park High was arranged with the help of City Council member Joy Picus, whose district includes the area in which the school is located. The group plans to hold similar assemblies at other schools as soon as they can be arranged, she said.

The program is important, she said, because many youngsters don’t know that they can protect themselves from violence in the family and in relationships. “To them, it’s just life.”