Teens Taught to Avoid Abusive Relationships

This is the scenario: Two teens are on a date at a party, having a good time, until the boy tries to coerce the girl into having sex with him in an upstairs bedroom. She says, “No.” He responds using insults and physical force.

It is this scenario that women from the Haven Hills Teen Dating Violence Prevention Team, part of Haven Hills Inc., a shelter for battered women, are trying to combat.

The women use role-playing and question-and-answer sessions to drive home the message that teens don’t have to accept abuse--physical, sexual or verbal--in their relationships.

The “teen team” travels around the Valley, talking to groups of teenagers in schools, church groups and other community organizations.

Teens participating in the Kaiser Permanente Summer Youth Program watched the team’s presentation Wednesday at the hospital’s facility in Woodland Hills. Some said they already knew what to do in an abusive situation. Others questioned the validity of the group’s assertions that some boys who are brought up to be tough and controlling can become abusers.

But when it came down to role-playing and “Mark” tried to pressure “Joan” into sex at a party using physical force, the teens were universal in their opposition.

The boys in the audience told Mark to “chill,” and the girls would hear none of Joan’s protestations that Mark “really loved her.”

“That’s not love,” the girls cried out in unison.