Preventing the Pain

It began with pinching, hair pulling and aggressive squeezing. Irene’s 15-year-old boyfriend liked to play a little rough.

Then things got worse, recalled Irene (not her real name). If she bought makeup, he would destroy it. If she got her nails done, he would break them off. Once, when she was trying to do her laundry, he stabbed her in the stomach with a screwdriver.

It was not long before 13-year-old Irene was concealing multiple bruises and making up stories about how she got a black eye or a cut lip.

“He was very possessive of me,” Irene said. “[He] was my first love and my first everything, and I don’t know where my head was, but I listened to everything he said. I obeyed his rules.”

Irene not only listened to him, she protected the boy by hiding the abuse from her family for more than a year. During that time, she lost most of her friends.

“I went through emotional abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse--everything there was to hurt me,” she said. “I was too scared to say anything. . . . He would say, ‘I’ll blow up your house if you leave me. I’ll kill you.’ ”

Irene’s abusive relationship provides a graphic case study of what domestic violence counselors describe as a significant problem. They say teenagers too often find themselves in abusive dating relationships that can result in serious injury--even death.

“I think it should be a concern that we pay attention to as seriously as when there are adults in this violence,” said Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “The more we ignore this behavior and consider it puppy love, the more we make it possible that [the victims] will actually end up dead.”

Some health classes in Southern California high schools cover the subject of violence in domestic and dating relationships, and some counseling centers offer information and help for teenagers. Overall, however, abuse is still a subject that teenagers tend to share only with peers.

Because of the underreporting of abuse incidents, experts say, there is limited public awareness of the issue, and statistics do not fully reflect its extent.

Some surveys indicate that violence occurs in 25% to 30% of teenage dating relationships, said Smith of the national coalition.

This problem can begin as young as age 12, and in 95% of reported cases, girls are the victims, according to Break the Cycle, a nonprofit organization that offers counseling and legal assistance to teenagers in abusive relationships.

In 1997, about 30% of 3,466 female homicide victims, including some teenagers, were killed by male partners or former male partners, according to FBI crime statistics.

Nationally, about 6% of female murder victims age 17 or younger were killed by partners in an intimate relationship, according to a U.S. Justice Department report, based on FBI figures from 1976 to 1996. For male murder victims, the figure was less than 1%.

The same report found that among women who have experienced violence in intimate relationships, those ages 16 to 19 suffered among the highest rates of violence.

Domestic violence occurs in every race and culture, said Carolee Newman, executive director of Valley Women’s Center Inc. in Tarzana. “The important thing to know is that it transcends socioeconomic boundaries as well.”

Abuse occurs just as frequently in homosexual relationships as in heterosexual ones, said Linda Berger, executive director of the Statewide California Coalition for Battered Women. But these situations are reported even less often because, in many cases, the teenagers are reluctant to disclose that they are homosexual.

Confiding in Peers

The majority of teenagers in abusive relationships have not talked to any adults about the physical or emotional abuse that they suffer and are likely to confide only in peers, Berger and other experts said.

“It is a very large problem. I think it’s even a bigger problem than we know about,” said Shirley Gellatly, community education director at Human Options in Orange County.

In what is typically their first serious relationship, teenagers can have difficulty comprehending what behaviors constitute abuse, particularly if they have seen it in their homes, where it may be treated as acceptable behavior.

“If the child has grown up in a home where there is family violence, then the child will not recognize [it] and may think that the violence going on in their teenage relationship is normal,” Gellatly said.

One study found that more than 51% of students who witnessed abuse in their parents’ relationships ended up in abusive relationships themselves.

Additionally, jealousy and possessive behavior can be mistaken for signs of love and affection in some cases, said Tanya Koenig of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. Such controlling behavior often results in isolating the victims from their friends and family and frequently escalates into violence.

Irene’s boyfriend exhibited such behavior about two months into their relationship. He would get angry if she did her laundry because he thought that if she looked nice, she would attract other men, Irene recalled. When she slept, he would cut her hair. If the telephone rang, he would pick it up and throw it because he did not like her getting phone calls while he was there.

The abuse in Irene’s relationship mirrors troubled adult relationships in key ways, said Deborah Kass, deputy in charge of the East Lake Juvenile Division for the district attorney’s office, near County-USC Medical Center.

“It runs the gamut from punching each other out to using some kind of weapon,” she said.

“And the victims have the tendency to recant, just like adults do.”

One of the most dangerous times is when the victim tries to end the relationship, said Newman. Victims’ fear and secrecy make it difficult to get help to those in abusive relationships before violence escalates, possibly resulting in death, Newman said.

Victim’s Friends Knew of Her Fears

The stories that capture public attention often are some of the most extreme and most tragic. One such case occurred two years ago when 21-year-old Khoa Truc “Robert” Dang returned to his former Norwalk high school and killed his ex-girlfriend, 16-year-old Catherine Tran, and then committed suicide. She had just ended a long relationship with Dang. Her friends described Dang as excessively possessive and said that Tran feared his temper and violent side.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has seen many such cases that received less media attention.

In June 1997, 18-year-old Charles Salas, a member of the 18th Street gang, showed up at the home of an ex-girlfriend who had broken up with him two weeks earlier. He accused her of seeing other people, shot her in the head and fled. He committed suicide before he could be arrested.

In these cases, the abusers were only a few years older than their victims, but it is not unusual to see cases involving teenagers dating adults who are 10 years older than they are, said Susan Powers, assistant head deputy for the district attorney’s sex crimes unit.

Sexual relations with a minor can be “a really serious, predatory kind of crime in many circumstances,” Powers said. “It can start as just coercive behavior, demanding that the teen be certain places, do certain things. When that doesn’t happen it can result in physical violence.”

Adults in relationships with teenagers can be very immature individuals with low thresholds of anger that can erupt in violence, Powers said. “Some of the violence can be really horrific,” she said. In one such case, a 27-year-old man, who had fathered 11 babies by different teenage girls, abused the teenagers by hitting them with a cane and locking them in rooms. He beat one pregnant girl so badly that she gave birth prematurely, Powers said.

Many high school students have seen friends in abusive relationships with older men. In some cases, they are witnesses to the abuse.

Ruby Martinez, 15, listened to a lecture at Los Angeles High School on abusive relationships and recalled seeing many girlfriends in such relationships with older men.

“Since they’re bigger, [the boyfriends] think that they own them,” Ruby said. “I have friends who are scared.”

Nick Diaz has seen a friend physically abuse a girlfriend.

“I’ve seen him grab her and actually hit her. I saw him smack her once,” Diaz said. “I told him he should stop doing that.”

Another of Diaz’s male friends has had a restraining order filed against him.

Venice High senior Nereida Vital has witnessed the abuse in a friend’s relationship with a possessive boyfriend.

“He’d get mad if she [went] out with me,” said Vital. “If she wanted to sleep over at my house, she got really scared that he’d come look for her.”

That relationship ended last month, when Vital’s friend finally broke it off.

Teaching Teenagers

Irene also confided only in her peers. When her family saw her with bruises or a bloody lip, she would tell them that a gang jumped her. Her boyfriend backed up such stories and even said that he tried to jump in and break it up. When he broke her nose the first time, she tried to hide it from her father.

“I didn’t want to tell my dad about it because I thought he would beat [my boyfriend] up,” said Irene, who remembers that on that day, clumps of hair that her boyfriend had pulled out were scattered throughout her bedroom.

Kami, 17, confided solely in one friend. Her boyfriend, who forbid her to talk to some of her peers, started his physical abuse by pinching her and pulling her hair.

“If he told me to get something and I didn’t get it, he’d just pinch me,” said Kami (not her real name). It was not long until he was punching her in the legs and arms, and then in the face.

When she got pregnant, he punched her in the arm and pulled her hair.

Outreach programs throughout Southern California try to teach teenagers like Irene and Kami that controlling and violent behavior in relationships is not normal or acceptable.

Many of these programs focus on high school and middle school students in an attempt to stop abusive relationships before they start. Legislation is being considered in Sacramento that would require domestic violence issues to be covered in grades 1 through 12 in the state’s public schools.

The goal of the legislation (AB 558) is to reach children at an early age and let them know that domestic violence should not be the norm, said Janice Rocco, chief of staff to Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara).

For now, many students rely on independent programs that offer counseling and assistance for teenagers.

In many cases, these programs are sponsored by centers that already deal with adult domestic violence. For the past year, the California Department of Health Services has been studying abusive teenage relationships, services available to teenagers and whether centers are equipped to help them, said Carol L. Motylewski-Link, chief of the department. The study is to be completed by the end of the year.

In the San Fernando Valley, the Valley Women’s Center Inc. has been offering services for teenagers and doing outreach to area schools since 1995 in an effort to heighten young people’s awareness of abuse.

“We don’t want to just define the problem,” Newman said. “We want them to feel that there is hope, that other people have gotten out of it and there is help.”

The center offers counseling and support groups for young victims and abusers, who are more likely to respond to this treatment at earlier ages, Newman said.

Another organization, Break the Cycle, focuses solely on adolescents and provides an education program that includes legal information on how abusive behavior can be punishable by law. The organization goes to high schools, middle schools, juvenile detention facilities, and boys and girls clubs, giving information on types of abuse and warning signs of unhealthy relationships. Counseling and legal representation to help get restraining orders also are available.

“We’re teaching kids that it’s not just a bad thing that’s hurtful but also illegal and that crimes have consequences,” said Meredith Blake, executive director of Break the Cycle.

In the first six months of this year, Break the Cycle received 197 requests from victims or their friends for counsel or representation, said Jessica Aronoff, legal services program director.

Kami got a restraining order when she broke up with her boyfriend after he bit her lip so badly that it was swollen for two days. She is planning to renew the order when the time comes, “just to be on the safe side, in case he gets drunk or on drugs and decides to come back for revenge.”

Irene never got a restraining order against her boyfriend. She went back to him twice after he broke her nose, and each time, he broke her nose again.

Finally, she decided to end the relationship and is now getting counseling. Despite the physical abuse, she is not worried that he will come after her, and has never made a police report.

“I don’t want to snitch him out,” she said. “I wasn’t raised to be a snitch.”

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Warning Signs

Counselors who deal with teenagers say certain behaviors are indicators that a dating relationship is, or is becoming, abusive. Some of them:

* Your boyfriend or girlfriend is extremely jealous or insecure.

* He or she is possessive or controlling, telling you how to dress, how much makeup to wear and whom you can talk to.

* He or she has an explosive temper that frightens you and can result in physical aggression.

* He or she makes accusations about you being unfaithful, wants you to spend all your time with him or her and gets angry if you spend time with other people.

* He or she yells at you, kicks, shoves, punches or slaps you, holds you down, throws things, or hurts you in any way.

* He or she threatens to hurt you or someone you care about, such as your friends, family members or pets.

* He or she forces you into having sex or puts you in a situation in which you are afraid to say no to sex.

More information on this topic is available at (800) 799-SAFE, or on the Internet at:

https://www.break-the-cycle.org

https://www.lacaaw.org

https://www.valwomctr.org