A 17-year-old from Red Wing says her boyfriend tries to control her.
He has her Facebook password, checks her messages, deletes "friends" on her account and tells her she can't hang out with certain people, she said Thursday, after the release of a report about teen-dating violence in Minnesota.
"It's not healthy, for one thing, because you need your privacy," she said.
During the study, in focus groups with more than 200 youths, they reported "that while physical abuse occurs, it's emotional and verbal abuse that they see most often in teen relationships," said Patty Wetterling, sexual violence prevention director for the state Health Department.
Minnesota was one of six states chosen for a teen dating violence prevention initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The initiative studied the programs in the state to prevent teen-dating violence and made recommendations to prevent such violence.
The report said that even though many people and organizations are concerned with preventing teen-dating violence, there is little coordination of efforts.
During the 18 months the report was compiled by the Minnesota Health Department and Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, 10 young people died in the state as a result of dating violence, said Sasha Cotton, prevention specialist for the battered women coalition.
"Teen-dating violence is a serious problem that youth are facing, probably at rates higher than we had expected," she said. "This process, this plan and these recommendations are only the beginning. ... We know that dating violence is 100 percent preventable, but it will require partnership."
Wetterling said the report's challenges began with the language.
"The first was the word 'teen,' " she said. "Youth don't relate to the word 'teen.' Teen does not translate literally into Spanish, and it's more restrictive in age than what we were working with. And youth really don't date anymore. They sort of hang out."
Then there is "violence." It "conjures up different images in people's heads, so we wanted to be clear that people understood that it also could include emotional abuse," Wetterling said.
Youth said they didn't have "consistent people or places in their lives modeling healthy, respectful relationships," the report's executive summary said.
Children need to learn about respectful relationships before they reach adolescence, the report said.
"Most of our partners agree that if healthy, respectful relationship building was a part of core curriculum in elementary school as well as being modeled in the home and community, there would be fewer incidences of bullying and TDV (teen-dating violence) as our youth get older and relationships become more intimate and complex," the report said.
About one in three adolescent girls in the United States is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
The teen from Red Wing said she hopes the report spreads the word about teen-dating violence: "It's not healthy to stay in a relationship if you're being abused emotionally or physically."
The report contains five recommendations to prevent teen-dating violence:
-- Prevention efforts in Minnesota should be implemented and coordinated.
-- There should be "a strong statewide network of youth service organizations, domestic and sexual violence organizations, schools, faith communities and community groups working on prevention efforts."
-- Youth leadership should be involved in prevention efforts.
-- Media messages "that reflect positive messages about teen dating violence prevention work" are needed.
-- "Every child in the state needs to have access to teen dating violence prevention resources and services." ..Source.. by Mara H. Gottfried
No comments:
Post a Comment