Teen Was Bruised, Battered by Young ‘Love’ : Battering: One study said 25% of teens had experienced violence while dating. Patterns resemble battered-spouse syndrome.

Three years ago, Maryland teen-ager Lynn Ann Kenny began dating a 17-year-old boy who, she says, regularly slapped and punched her, called her fat and once flung her across the room.

Last July, Garry V. Leinbach was found guilty in Anne Arundel County, Md., Circuit Court of assault and battery for a December, 1992, beating that sent Kenny to the hospital with a smashed nose, black eyes, a bruised kidney and bites, blood and bruises all over her body.

But asked to describe the toughest part of their three-year relationship, Kenny, of Glen Burnie, Md., cited neither the bruises nor the insults.

“The hardest part was recognizing that he wasn’t calling anymore, wasn’t coming around, and that I had to start all over again,” said Kenny, 18, who was 15 when she started dating Leinbach.

Guidance counselors and therapists say the relationship between Kenny and Leinbach reflects an alarming trend among teen-agers across the country. An increasing number are engaging in abusive dating relationships that are nearly identical to adult battered-spouse syndrome, down to the victim’s low self-esteem and the batterer’s need to assert power, specialists say.

Many researchers consider teen-age dating violence an extension of the sexual stereotyping and violence that infects U.S. society on all levels, from dysfunctional families to popular culture and corporate suites. Some see it as part of a continuum that ranges from sexually harassing jokes and comments to stalking, serious assault and rape.

Although official statistics are scarce, the handful of studies conducted in recent years by researchers in this country have found that at least 25% of teen-agers say they have experienced physical violence in a dating relationship, according to Santa Monica therapist Barrie Levy, who surveyed the literature for her 1991 book “Dating Violence: Young Women in Danger.”

The phenomenon has led women’s advocates to call for earlier intervention to prevent abusive relationships as early as junior high school.

“After 25 years of consciousness-raising about domestic violence, girls are somehow still believing that this behavior is an expression of love,” said Leslie Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Women Policy Studies. “It means we have to do a better job, earlier, of helping girls believe in themselves.”

He was “clean” and “well-mannered” and had “preppy looks”--those were the qualities that first attracted Lynn Kenny to Garry Leinbach.

“He was everything I thought I wanted in a boyfriend,” she recalled in an interview. “He did whatever I wanted--we got ice cream, went to the park, he cooked me dinner.

“He showed me the attention I wasn’t getting at home,” she said, noting that her extended family includes three siblings, two nephews across the street and a mechanic father and secretary mother who work long hours.

After about three months, Kenny said, she began to see another side to Leinbach, then a 17-year-old senior from a nearby high school. He wanted to be around her all the time, tried to isolate her from her parents and girlfriends and became wildly jealous, she said.

“The first time he pushed me,” she said, “I didn’t think anything of it--a lot of guys push girls.” The first time he hit her, the slap “was hard enough to leave a red mark on my face, hard enough to make me cry,” she said. After that first blow, she said, he cried and apologized and she forgave him. The pattern was set.

As the violence escalated, Kenny said, he hit her in the arms and face. What precipitated the blows usually was his suspicion that she was flirting with the only people he would let her be around--his friends, she said.

“Most of the time, I would look at the floor and say nothing--I just tried so hard never to give him a reason to hit me,” she recalled.

When her parents asked about the welts and bruises, Kenny said, she told them she had fallen over some furniture or been in a car accident. She also was sneaking out of the house at night to sleep with Leinbach in a van he would park nearby.

Her parents, meanwhile, were growing increasingly upset about the relationship but felt helpless to stop it.

“Every time I confronted her about the bruises, she told me a lie,” said Kenny’s mother, Billie Kenny.

The final incident occurred on Christmas eve. Kenny and Leinbach were in the parking lot of a local pool hall when some boys made a crude comment to Kenny. Upon hearing it, Leinbach became incensed and attacked Kenny.

The assault, which took place inside Leinbach’s van, “was the most brutal beating I have ever seen, short of ones that lead to a death,” said William Mulford, the Anne Arundel County assistant state’s attorney who handled the case.

She never went back to him after that. Leinbach was found guilty of one count of assault and battery in that case. He also pleaded guilty to assault and battery in another incident earlier in the fall in which he beat and choked her. In mid-August he was sentenced to three years in prison, all but 18 months suspended, and five years’ probation. He cannot contact Kenny, and must complete any recommended counseling.

Kenny said she doesn’t like to speculate on why she stayed with Leinbach for three years: “I just tell myself I learned from it.”

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Garry Leinbach’s description of their relationship is quite different. Although admitting that he has a problem with his temper and sometimes resorted to violence, he blamed Kenny for inciting him.

“Psychological abuse can leave scars too, you know,” he said.

“She knew how to press all my buttons,” Leinbach, 20, said in a telephone interview before he was sentenced. “She wanted to be hit. Something wasn’t right (to her) unless she was hit.”

He described their relationship as a battle for control: “Some weeks, she’d be on top of the relationship; other weeks, I’d be on top.”

Leinbach claimed that Kenny was “promiscuous” and that she “lied, cheated on me and stole from me.” (Kenny strongly denied those accusations.) Reacting to her behavior, he said, “I might have slapped her some, but not with a closed fist.”

At times, Leinbach made an effort to stress that he is taking responsibility for his actions.

“I want people to know I’m seeking help, I definitely regret it now,” he said. “I’m sorry and I really apologize to the entire United States.

“I’ve got to learn, when I get angry, to walk out of the room,” he said.

As for the Christmas eve incident, Leinbach said he remembers little because he had had 10 drinks and taken Xanax, a tranquilizer: “I haven’t even seen the pictures (of Kenny’s injuries). I don’t think I want to see them.”