Dating violence prevention

This course will help you:

> Understand teen dating violence and its consequences

> Identify factors that can place teens at risk for dating violence

> Communicate with teens about the importance of healthy relationships

> Learn about resources to prevent dating violence

By working with teens, families, organizations, and communities to implement effective teen dating violence prevention strategies, you can help make your school safer and healthier for all students.

What is teen dating violence?

Sexual Assault, Dating Violence, and Stalking

If you are not on or near the UW-Madison campus, you may call one of these 24-hour hotlines to be connected to resources in your area:

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1?800?799?SAFE (7233) or TTY 1?800?787?3224

National Sexual Assault/RAINN Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Click to find out more about

UW-Madison’s first-year violence

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Healthy relationships consist of trust, honesty, respect, equality, and compromise. 1 Unfortunately, teen dating violence—the type of intimate partner violence that occurs between two young people who are, or who were once in, an intimate relationship—is a serious problem in the United States. A national survey found that ten percent of teens, female and male, had been the victims of physical dating violence within the past year 2 and approximately 29 percent of adolescents reported being verbally or psychologically abused within the previous year. 3

Teen dating violence can be any one, or a combination, of the following:

Physical. This includes pinching, hitting, shoving, or kicking.

Emotional. This involves threatening a partner or harming his or her sense of self-worth. Examples include name calling, controlling/jealous behaviors, consistent monitoring, shaming, bullying (online, texting, and in person), intentionally embarrassing him/her, keeping him/her away from friends and family.

Sexual. This is defined as forcing a partner to engage in a sex act when he or she does not or cannot consent.

It can negatively influence the development of healthy sexuality, intimacy, and identity as youth grow into adulthood 4 and can increase the risk of physical injury, poor academic performance, binge drinking, suicide attempts, unhealthy sexual behaviors, substance abuse, negative body image and self-esteem, and violence in future relationships. 5

Teen dating violence can be prevented, especially when there is a focus on reducing risk factors as well as fostering protective factors. and when teens are empowered through family, friends, and others (including role models such as teachers, coaches, mentors, and youth group leaders) to lead healthy lives and establish healthy relationships. It is important to create spaces, such as school communities, where the behavioral norms are not tolerant of abuse in dating relationships. The message must be clear that treating people in abusive ways will not be accepted, and policies must enforce this message to keep students safe.

1 U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011

2 CDC, 2010

3 Halpern, Oslak, Young, Waller, Markin, & Kupper, 2001

4 Foshee & Reyes, 2009

Preventing Dating Violence

Dating violence can happen to any teen regardless of gender, race, socio-economic status, or whether or not they have experience with dating.

Dating violence includes any behavior that is used to manipulate, gain control, gain power; cause fear, or make a dating partner feel bad about himself or herself.

Office of Safe Schools

Teen Dating Violence Prevention

Florida Statute 1006.148, requires school districts to adopt and implement a policy prohibiting dating violence and abuse by any student on school property, during a school sponsored activity, or during school-sponsored transportation, and providing procedures for responding to such incidents of dating violence or abuse, including accommodations for students experiencing dating violence or abuse.

What is Teen Dating Violence?

Teen Dating Violence is a pattern of emotional, verbal, sexual, or physical abuse used by one person in a current or past dating relationship to exert power and control over another when one or both of the partners is a teenager. Abuse may include insults, coercion, social sabotage, sexual harassment, stalking, threats and/or acts of physical or sexual abuse. The abusive partner uses this pattern of violent and coercive behavior to gain power and maintain control over the dating partner. This may also include abuse, harassment, and stalking via electronic devices such as cell phones and computers, and harassment through a third party, and may be physical, mental, or both.

In Teen Dating Violence relationships, there are Three Important Roles:

The Abuser - A person who physically, sexually, verbally or emotionally hurts a dating partner.

The Victim - A person who is hurt physically, sexually, verbally or emotionally by a dating partner.

The Bystander - A person who is aware that someone is being abused in a dating relationship. The bystander may become aware of the abuse through the abuser's or target's actions or words, or through second-hand information.

Important links:

Florida's Law (S. 1006.148, F. S.)

FDOE's Model Policy (PDF, 62KB)

FDOE Memorandum and Policy Requirements (PDF, 53KB)

What Can You Do About Teen Dating Violence

Loveisrespect. org

Ending Unhealthy Relationships

Today's post was written by Alexis O. a member of the National Youth Advisory Board. To learn more about the NYAB, click here .

When I was growing up, I watched my mother fall in and out of love with men who were nothing but bad for her. There was never a day when my mother and her man of the week weren’t at each others throats, and I watched, day after day as he verbally and physically abused her. Later in the day she would go crawling back, because she thought no one else would want her - a thought put in her head by the same person who had earlier called her a “stupid slut.” I always knew somewhere deep down that their behavior was abnormal, and I swore to myself to never end up like my mother had.

And I have not. Very few people know about the way I grew up. I disclose as little of my past as possible, because I believe that my past is no longer a part of me. But everyone knows about my refusal to be treated as less than, and my boyfriends over the years have had to learn that as well. There has only been one incident where my partner treated me as less than a goddess and in the end, I broke up with him.

I say that like it was easy, though. It was not. I knew that he was wrong for me from the minute he told me that I was his girlfriend so he could do whatever he wanted to me, whenever he wanted. This came after I got angry with him for being too clingy and grabby in public. When I thought it over later and decided to break up with him, I tried. But he cried and told me he was sorry, and that it would never happen again, and that he loved me more than anyone he had ever met, and I couldn’t do it. That’s the thing about abusers. They are not wholly evil. And they are damn good liars that sometimes they even fool themselves. But if they get away with something once, they start pushing their boundaries and pretty soon they are telling you that they didn’t rape you because you never said no, in fact you didn’t say anything. That’s when I realized if I didn’t break up with this boy, I would marry him and have children with him and be forced to spend my life with a man I didn’t love telling me that what I did or didn’t want wasn’t important. I remembered that promise I made to myself as I little girl to never end up like my mother, and I left.

The thing about unhealthy relationships is that we want to believe that person can change. We want to believe that if we stick around they will stop insulting us to keep us with them longer. That they will get over their rough patch in life and they won’t have to hit us when we mess up. But I am here to tell you as a survivor of multiple types of abuse that they don’t change, and it is important to realize that. I wish I could say that you can change them. That if you want it enough, and try enough, your partner will stop hitting you, insulting you, isolating you. But for a person to change, they have to want it, and abusers are oftentimes in denial about who they are, so they are going to get angry for you even suggesting there is something wrong with who they are as a person. If you find yourself dating someone who hits you, even once, it's not okay. You have the right to tell someone. Your partner is going to make you feel like you are scum for trying to make them look bad, but you should not be ashamed of defending yourself, and preserving your well-being. It is not your fault they abuse you, physically, verbally, or emotionally. It is never your fault.

Healthy relationships should be based off of equality and respect, not control and power. In a healthy relationship you are not afraid of your partner's anger, because they aren’t a threat to you. You feel safe, supported, happy, and excited to be around each other. You respect each other, have lives that are separate from each other, but can come back and be a unit at any given time. In healthy relationships, both parties have a right to privacy. If your partner is forcing you to allow them to read your text messages or emails or Facebook messages, there is a problem.

Remember, love is respect. And you deserve that. Don’t settle for anything less.

If you are seeing some of the warning signs that your relationship might be unhealthy or abusive, our peer advocates are here to help! Call, chat or text anytime, 24/7.