Teen dating violence or dating abuse is not limited to girls only. Boys experience it as well.
Types of Teen Dating Violence:
- Physical – hitting, pinching, shoving, pushing, kicking
- Emotional – harming a person’s self esteem, verbal name calling, controlling behavior, jealous behavior, bullying, cyber bullying, purposely embarrassing the other person or shaming
- Sexual – any type of forced sex act, rape
- Stalking – harassing or threatening tactics to cause fear
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance 2011, reports that 9% of high school students report being a victim of dating violence by a girlfriend or boyfriend in the past 12 months (at the time of the survey).
Another report showed that about 29% of teenagers reported being a victim of emotional dating violence in the past year.
It is reported that of adult victims of rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner that 15% of males and 22.4% of females had experienced some type of dating violence between the ages of 11 and 17 years old. These statistics show that there are far reaching effects of dating teen violence into adulthood.
Most teenagers do not report date violence; sometimes because they don’t recognize that the behavior is a type of violence.
As parents it is important to teach our teens about healthy relationships and dating violence. Part 2 of Teen Dating Violence will address healthy relationships in detail and Part 3 of Teen Dating Violence will discuss unhealthy relationships.
Victims of teen dating violence need help.
Triumph Youth Services has been working with adolescent males for many years. Their staff is compassionate and caring. If your son has been a victim of teen dating violence or is experiencing other difficulties such as depression, substance abuse, problems in school etc., call for help.
Reference:
http://findyouthinfo.gov/youth-topics/teen-dating-violence
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/TeenDatingViolence2012-a.pdf
