Learning the Way Out of Abuse

It’s fourth period at Olympic High School in Santa Monica and a group of students is trying to sort out at what point the attentions of a fellow teen turns into abuse.

“When someone touches you and you don’t want it,” says one girl. “But you should know when someone’s feeling on you,” counters another. “Only a dumb broad stays with someone who’s going to hit her,” exclaims a third.

The two boys in the room, looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else, barely say a word.

If it is not the most enlightening discussion, it does point out the challenges of opening the minds of even the most streetwise of kids to the harsh realities of being physically and sexually abused by other young people. And of trying to get them to be neither victim nor aggressor.

An ambitious new effort in California is funding 10 pilot projects--including two in Los Angeles County--that teach young women and men what behavior during teen dating crosses the line and how to prevent it.

The new initiative is fueled by recent studies suggesting that physical and sexual abuse among teenagers is at critical levels in California and nationally.

“What we have found is that there appears to be a higher prevalence of abuse among younger women and they have far less access to resources,” said Kathony Jerauld, a domestic violence specialist with the California Department of Health Services. “It’s not just violence, but can include emotional and verbal abuse that is just as harmful.”

The most innovative aspect of the programs in the Los Angeles area is that they are being developed by teens themselves. The programs at the Ocean Park Community Center in Santa Monica and at Haven Hills in Canoga Park have brought together panels of young people to help decide on publicizing services where their friends are likely to hear about them.

The ideas include producing public service announcements for television, radio and movie previews, setting up a Web site and theater workshops, training young people in middle and high schools to be peer counselors, and setting up informal booths where teens can talk at malls, movie theaters, youth parks and other hangouts.

Among the planners is William Villarreal, an 18-year-old youth leader for the Ocean Park group. After a 56-hour course, he goes to middle and high schools to talk to students about dating violence, and has been pleased by the response to someone their own age. Especially the boys.

“The boys might feel like they’re being attacked, but I can say, listen, I’m a guy too and I know the potential,” said Villarreal, a Glendale Community College freshman who works part time at the Commission on Assaults Against Women.

It is important to let young people know that dating violence, and especially verbal and emotional abuse, can also be perpetrated by girls and to tackle the cultural traditions of male dominance that expose some young people to violence, he said. And those lessons must be taught at an early age.

Villarreal remembers a class of sixth-graders at Virgil Middle School, a rowdy bunch at first, until he started talking. He told them how some children hit on their classmates sexually and won’t take no for an answer.

And about how some students punch their friends because they’ve seen their fathers or brothers use violence to get their way. About how others, because they’re scared and insecure, put up with physical or sexual abuse, even though they know they shouldn’t.

After he finished and the hands flew up, Villarreal knew that some of these youngsters from the gritty sidewalks of the Westlake district had probably experienced or witnessed such scenes.

“It’s great when you know you’ve affected somebody,” said Villarreal. “And it just shows that we can reach some of these kids.”

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine of eighth- and ninth-grade boys and girls indicated that 25% had been victims of nonsexual dating violence and 8% had been victims of sexual dating violence.

Yet research on teen dating violence is scarce, and most statistics do not fully reflect the problem, according to a recent assessment by Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Natalie knows about that kind of abuse and now is trying to reach other young people.

She was a vibrant, artistic, outspoken 16-year-old when she met a boy who would end up abusing her for two years. Now 20 and a Fashion Institute student, she says she realizes now that her boyfriend exhibited classic signs of an abuser.

Through control and manipulation, he began to isolate her from family and friends and dictate what she wore and what music she listened to.

About a year into the relationship he began to slap and punch her--in one incident breaking some ribs. Each time, he apologized and took her out to dinner and on shopping sprees.

Something inside her finally snapped, and Natalie began to regain a sense of self-esteem. Then she got a restraining order to keep him from coming near her.

What is so puzzling to her now is that she knew the relationship was toxic: Her mother had worked for years at the Commission on Assaults Against Women and she had been a regular in the office since she was a child.

“Like other girls, I was young, needing attention, and I didn’t really know what to expect from a boyfriend,” she said in one of the commission’s counseling rooms.

“So many girls don’t know what domestic violence is. I go out to high schools and elementary schools and girls tell me they don’t even know they were being verbally abused. Kids joke around so much, they don’t know how to separate it.”

She also works part time now with the Commission on Assaults Against Women, and says when she goes out to schools, she urges girls to be themselves.

An artistic version of that advice will be used by the Haven Hills group, which will join the North Hollywood-based Theater of Hope in a visual and performance project in which young victims of dating violence will create masks to represent their emotions.

Janet Bernson, an expressive arts educator with the theater group, said the masks are a creative way to reveal the insecurities and, ultimately, strengths of survivors of domestic abuse.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Bernson said of the new project. “The teen population is the one that needs the most support; they have very little experience about what real relationships are about.”

Experts say the methods used to intervene with adult victims of domestic violence often fail to reach younger women.

Most battered women’s shelters are set up to cater to adult women and their children. There are also legal ramifications that might hamper access to teens.

For example, sex with an underage girl is statutory rape and must be reported by counselors or teachers who learn of it. In addition, young abuse victims say they worry about rumors being spread and being separated by authorities from their parents or partners.

“Some girls are reticent to get the help they need because they know they don’t have the confidentiality that adults have,” said Abby Sims, a program coordinator with the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, who presided over the Olympic High School session.

Adolescents also confront issues of physical development and emotional maturity that differ from adult problems, said Sims, who is helping to put together teen panels at Santa Monica High School and Venice High for the Ocean Park project.

Ultimately, said Sims, it is important to let young people know that if they are involved in abusive relationships, there are ways to get help.

Standing in the Olympic High hall, she noted that one of the boys, who had sat in stony silence, had attended an earlier discussion group and had come back for this second one.

“So you never know, maybe he is getting something out of it,” she said.