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Heather Norris. Image from The New York Times.
“A Rise in Efforts to Spot Abuse in Youth Dating” from The New York Times, written by Elizabeth Olson.
She was 17 when she met her boyfriend, and 20 when she died at his hands. In between, Heather Norris tried several times to leave the relationship, which was fraught with control and abuse, before she was killed — stabbed, dismembered and discarded in trash bags.
Her death in 2007 in Indianapolis is one of several stemming from abuse in teenage dating relationships that have spurred states and communities to search for new ways to impress on adolescents — and their parents and teachers — the warning signs of dangerous dating behavior and what actions are not acceptable or healthy.
The word of the day is good, I guess. If only teenagers could receive total equality by not having seperate services, though! Still, it’s not bad news.
“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who began doing research on abuse in teenage dating relationships nearly a decade ago.
Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.
Such behavior often falls under the radar of parents, teachers and counselors because adolescents are too embarrassed to admit they are being mistreated.
[...]
The foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., decided to fund preventive efforts based on research, including from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. In the C.D.C.’s 2007 survey of 15,000 adolescents, 10 percent reported physical abuse like being hit or slapped by a romantic partner. Nearly 8 percent of teenagers in the survey said they were forced to have sexual intercourse.
Dating abuse victims, the center found, are more likely to engage in binge drinking, suicide attempts, physical fights and sexual activity. And the rates of drug, alcohol and tobacco use are more than twice as high in abused girls as in other girls the same age.
It’s so great to know that things like this happening aren’t totally underground! And yet, there had to be one obligatorily agist comment mentioned:
“Few adolescents understand what a healthy relationship looks like,” Dr. Miller said.
Adolescents often mistake the excessive attention of boys as an expression of love, she said.
The first part doesn’t have evidence to even back up the claim, and the second part is a mistake almost everybody would make about a romantic partner before realizing they might be obsessive — not special to teenagers. Especially when you bring up an anecdote like this:
Kayla Brown, 18, was among them. At first, her high school boyfriend made a great impression last year when he “called my mother to introduce himself,” said Ms. Brown, a senior at an Indianapolis charter school.
Then he began “calling me every hour to see where I was and what I was doing,” she said. Finally, during an argument he slammed a chair into a cafeteria table and raised his fist.
Until that argument, who else would have mistaken the calling for being clingy?
Well, it all happens one step at a time.
