What Is It Going To Take?
It’s been a little over a week since the body of 18-year-old high-school graduate Lauren Astley was found near Boston, Massachusetts. The young woman’s life seems to have been taken away in an act of domestic violence that occurred after Astley ended a three-year, on and off again relationship with her boyfriend Nathaniel Fujita. On the night that he allegedly killed her, he bombarded her with text messages and insisted that they meet. She relented and the situation turned fatal. Fujita allegedly stabbed Astley, wrapped bungee cords around her throat and left her body in a marsh. Evidence has been found connecting Fujita with the incident and he was recently arrested and charged with the young woman’s murder.
While it is not common for these types of relationships to end in murder, teen dating violence is anything but rare. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, it is estimated that 1 in 3 high school relationships involve some sort of physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Despite such a high frequency of abuse taking place in teen relationships, it is not being given the attention that it deserves. What is it going to take for us to take this problem seriously? How many more women will lose their self-esteem, their focus in school, their friends and family, and even their lives due to intimate partner violence? Never mind- don’t answer that. I almost don’t want to know.
Many teens, as well as their parents, don’t believe that teen dating violence can happen to them. They believe that relationships are too casual at their age to incite the kind of emotional intensity that results in violence. Boy, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The pressures and hardships facing teens today are greater than those faced by any other generation. And with the advent of the technological age, where almost every teen has access to Facebook and cell phones, dating abuse is happening in ways we may not even recognize. For example, a survey performed by Love is Respect found that one-third of teens report receiving 10, 20 or even 30 controlling text messages an hour from their partner, asking where they are and who they’re with.
When addressing teen dating violence, one cannot understate the importance of prevention. The right time to start talking to teens about healthy relationships is before the relationship even forms. Adults need to promote the idea that kids shouldn’t be violent or controlling with anyone and that everyone deserves respect. We also need to make teens, parents and teachers aware of the warning signs associated with a dangerous relationship. Aside from cuts and bruises, signs of abuse also take the form of a lack of focus in school, low self-esteem, frequent mood swings, estrangement from family and friends, and even depression.
The best way to provide teens with help is to keep an open line of communication. Not only will this help your children recognize the potential risk, but it will also create a safe space where they may feel comfortable sharing if they feel as though they are in harms way. Besides creating a dialogue at home, you can also make an appointment to meet with your school principal and ask that some type of dating violence curriculum be implemented. Research shows that this helps reduce the risk of teen dating violence.
Let’s make today the day that we make ending teen dating violence a priority.
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
When I first heard Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie”, I was impressed. The lyrics of the song, which depict the cyclical nature of domestic violence, were gripping, raw, and touched me in a way that few songs rarely do. Each verse cycles through the violent argument, the apologetic pleas for forgiveness, and the promises given to the victim to keep her from leaving. I was pleased to see attention brought to the issue of domestic violence and saw the song as a strong teaching tool… but all that changed once I saw the music video.
I am not surprised at how violent the video for the song turned out to be; that’s not the problem I have. My concern is that the video glamorizes domestic violence instead of showing it as what it really is… a living nightmare. In one scene, the abuser strikes the victim and pushes her against the wall. Rather than show the victim struggling to get away or lying helpless, the couple is then shown transitioning from the fight to the bedroom, kissing passionately as if the violence was a form of foreplay.
Working for a Domestic Violence agency, I have witnessed how difficult it is to escape a violent relationship and understand the long-term effects of such a traumatic situation. While this helps me to identify that the video wrongly romanticizes intimate partner abuse, the majority of people who watch the video don’t have the ability to distinguish between what is reality and what is solely for shock and entertainment value.
Viewers of the video are impressionable teenage kids just beginning to enter the dating world and young adults learning how to form healthy, serious relationships. The only way that will be possible is if we stop sending them mixed messages. Domestic violence is real. It is not sexy, it is not mysterious, it is not remotely pleasurable. It is painful, it is consuming, and unfortunately many times it is inescapable. While I applaud the attempt of both Eminem and Rihanna to shed light on domestic abuse, I am afraid the video only hurts the cause.
They say that any publicity is good publicity, but in your opinion, is this the kind of attention we want to draw to domestic violence? Should we be thanking Eminem and Rihanna for shining light on the subject, or is their work doing more harm than good?
