teenage girls know someone their age that has been physically assaulted by their boyfriend or girlfriend yet less than twenty five percent of the teens say that they have discussed dating violence with their parents in addition one in fourteen have also admitted that they have been called names harassed or of been put down by their partner through calls and text messages today i am joined with allison weakland from domestic violence services of southwestern p a miss weakland has been working with them for eleven years in a variety of departments including education and training transitional housing legal advocacy in the safe house thank you for joining us today thank you for having me thank you so much so to start out for the viewers what is the difference between abusive relationships and talks in relationships because we talked about that earlier right so if we say the word toxic that could mean just a variety of unhealthy behaviors that maybe you're experiencing with a friend or family member or even a dating partner but even though they unhealthy they may not be doing those things with the intent of having power and control over their partner so we're talking about abusive person they are with knowledge and intent doing on top unhealthy things to get power and control over their partner ok so in abusive do you mean physically also verbal abuse of any of that all of the above so we're talking physical abuse verbal emotional abuse financial abuse sexual abuse and digital abuse with kind of deals with technology and using that against your partner not just like not just romantic relationships can be abusive what other relationships can be so versus physically talking about domestic violence or dating violence and we're talking either a family member or someone that you're dating of course friendships can be unhealthy but they would necessarily fall in the category of what we deal with which is domestic violence gotcha so how are these relationships formed while they start off usually like any other relationship because to be honest if you went on a first date with someone and they hit you or they called you a name or they were just not nice at all probably one gone that second date exactly so they're usually actually very nice and actually i find that victims usually tell me that when they first met their partner that it felt like they found the greatest person ever like they were so excited that this person wanted to be with them and date them and then it's usually after a little bit of time has gone by and some trust although not real trust has been built that you start to see more of the abuse of signs so why do people stay in these relationships that there's being abused because it's so difficult to get out for one there's their safety issues and there's also practical issues to getting out  especially we're talking about teenagers you know for adults it can be a little bit easier because generally you may not work with that person you may not already live with that person so to cut ties becomes a little bit easier but if you're a teen and you go to school with them it's a little bit more difficult to actually get away from that person and then there's the idea that i think people don't remember that once again what is abuse it's power and control over someone that person has that control they've made them feel like the victim that it's their fault that if they're better the relationship will get better that if they break up with them no one else will want them so it's also having that kind of like mind control over them so that's what kind of makes it difficult to get out and then feeling like no one will believe you or help you if you want to leave that person what services does the company provide for people that need to get out so specifically for teens we have a couple of options if they're eighteen and older they could certainly utilize the safe house but we find most teens don't need that specific service so what we do have is one on one counseling which we call empowerment counseling and the really cool thing about that is the teens are in charge of that counseling service so when they come to see me it's not like they lay on a couch and i'm like ok i want you to tell me this isn't this you know i say what do you want to tell me what is off limits you know they're tolling control that session and it's free and it's confidential and as if they're fourteen and older they can sign for their own services which means they don't need parental permission and their confidentiality will be protected unless it falls under mandated reporting which i can explain that as well but basically because their confidentiality is protected very similar to an adult they don't have to worry about me calling their parent and saying like hey do you know your son or daughter got services or calling the school or anything like that so what is mandy mandated  reporting so that's something that in my agency is if i know a child is being abused by an adult that i have to call c y f and report that now in terms of teens if they're coming to me to talk about a parent or guardian that's something right have to explain to them depending on what you tell me i may have to make a c y s report and i i put that on the table right away because i don't want anyone to feel like i'm tricking them so i explain to them that's what i what i absolutely have to report but if they're coming to me about a dating relationship a boyfriend or girlfriend that actually is not mandated for me to report if they're being abused by a peer that they're dating so that would remain confidential i mean are you allowed to like maybe if they're older than fourteen i guess not but tell someone that the hey this person is being physically abused because that's not ok are you allowed to tell anybody or because of the confidentiality there or than fourteen if they're older than fourteen and it's coming from their dating partner that's obviously within a certain age range i do not have to tell anyone you know obviously i'm going to work with them to tell trusted adults but their confidentiality is protected i don't have to call i don't have to call the school i don't have to call their parents what are some advice you give to the teens while first and foremost we safety plan is obviously you know i might be concerned about their physical safety so we talk about things that they can do in our partner gets angry and they're with them they've decided to break up with them we talk about safety planning whether it's school while they're at their after school jobs just different things that they can do to maintain their safety  but then we also talk about what wasn't healthy about that relationship in what is in a healthy relationship so they don't keep repeating that pattern because often times of someone is to experience an abusive relationship they can very easily fall into that pattern of being in an abusive relationship one after another and that affects someone for the rest of their life exactly what is also some advice you would give to break that cycle like if someone has been a multiple times you're not if you're right education education is the key to learning about why you might have ended up in a relationship how that relationship worked you know a lot of people a lot of victims might feel like i'm so stupid i can't believe and up in these relationships but it's it's not you're not stupid it's there's abusive people are very good at what they do that we educate about how the power and control works and how that can get you stuck but then we also talk about what does it mean to be in a healthy relationship and one of those skills and working on going those skills so not only can they identify when someone's being abusive but when they meet a nice person that they know actually how to build a healthy relationship with them and does the education stop at just the counseling or do you do more services to educate the kids so outside of the direct service which is like you know the one on one counseling we also didn't get it forgot to mention it but we also have a support group for teens as well  at the common ground teen center once a month and so beyond those direct services we also have our education training department and so we go into high schools and we offer basically presentations about teen dating violence so we talk about warning signs how to help a friend and obviously about our services and how to access them so what ages can do you go what what school do you go in to look for specific age or ages or any a age actually and they're all age appropriate so our youngest program that we have is called hands are not for hitting and so will go into like head start programs in like the kids will make their hand friends and we'll talk about what are helpful things that you do with your hands what bad things you would want to do with your hands and then it progresses from there when we go to school age kids we have a series of programs called connect and respected where we don't specifically talk about abuse but we try to teach some of those healthy relationship things so healthy communication problem solving skills how to show respect and then once we hit junior high in high school that's when we want to start talking about teen dating violence how can one come up about the services  someone a student go to a teacher and say hey i want to do this would be a good idea go to the principal or do principals are usually like superintendents usually come to you with hey can you come in actually it's usually us kind of you know contact goals you know saying hey we have these programs they're absolutely free you know so and we're flexible with our scheduling please let us come in and talk to the student but certainly i always encourage students parents teachers to kind of be and basters for us you know because teen dating violence is a difficult subject not everybody is comfortable talking about it i think sometimes it can make schools nervous and what if the parents come back and say something so i think having students and parents as ambassador saying like i think this is really important for you to have these educational programs in your school please invite this agency and i know they need to go to school programs i know they're free please we want our kids to have this educational opportunity how long has domestic violence or is this a southwestern p a done this the presentations for i've been there eleven years and they've been doing that ever since i've been around but i know it was even previous to that i'm not sure of the exact how long we've been doing it but it's been at least for eleven plus years in your time working there how have you seen like violent relationships change like through with society different age groups well i mean the scary thing about in terms of age groups and why we've been expanding our services to teens and trying to reach out to teens more is when we talk about domestic violence relationships we have one in four women and one in seven men experiencing some form of domestic violence in their relationships with teens it's one in three and notice we don't separate boys and girls because their victim rights are practically even so between obviously things are getting worse and are not getting better plus with technology and going back to talking about digital abuse  i think that's really big among the teen age group of not realising how that's being used against them possibly by a partner and obviously the adults you know the technology that's not something we grew up with we're kind of learning with you guys and you guys probably know a whole lot more about it than we do so to be able to talk about that and talk about safety and how it can be used against you i just don't think adults are really comfortable because they're not even one hundred percent sure of how everything works so that's something else that like trying to keep up on all the technology trends so i'm able to talk to teens special resave the planning and talking about the dangers of technology it's a lot to keep up with but it's really important i was actually just about half that you're one step ahead of me how can you prevent like with technology and everything being up and coming like new thing with our generation how do you prevent how do you prevent that well the biggest thing i talk to teens about is i found that they're very open with their passwords that's a very common thing in relationships that yes my boyfriend girlfriend has my passwords to everything and i'm like why and off in the wall how can they trust me if they don't know like who i'm talking to and who's posting on my page you know and all these things and i'm like because that's what trust is you just trust someone it's not because they're checking up on you so this idea of that you're allowed to have privacy and that you don't need to share your passwords or let them check your phone you know some other big thing like let me go see your text messages let me see your e mail you know whatever going through or going through your laptop or your i pad or or whatever it is that that's not ok and that's a form or control and that's not how a healthy relationship functions and not just well so show media how do you like movies and t v shows playing this thing like leaks into these relationships i think sometimes movies and television even lyrics and music and music videos i think that sometimes they can normalize violent behavior especially in intimate relationships that when we see it happen in real life it almost doesn't affect us or we or we toss it off and once on a big deal that kind of happens all the time because it's been normalized but it's not normal and it's it's not healthy you know it shouldn't be going in relationships but i think movies t v music media can desensitize us to what is healthy and what is not so how can we all work together like to not sensitized maybe uncensored has us that this isn't ok like we need to help people so we always encourage if you see something say something the problem can be is you do have to judge is this a safe time for you to say something because depending on how volatile the situation is it may not be safe for you to necessarily jump into a situation so always make sure that before you jump in that you feel safe doing that but you know even if you can't say anything in the moment if you say something to the victim or the bees or later saying like hey i noticed you fighting with your partner and that's not ok that's that's not how our relationship should be and just bringing that to their attention and then getting involved with our agency you know we're always looking for volunteers or people to hold drives for us or to like as we talked earlier about being in bassett or so anyway that you know people can get involved with helping us and this problem because we do believe that we can work ourselves out of a job but it it's it has to be more than just the people in my agency we need our communities to get involved with ending the problem as well who can volunteer anybody i mean it depends on what type of project or how long you want to volunteer with us if you want to be a consistent long term volunteer and you want to work directly with clients they have to go through volunteer training but if they want to do a service project or drive or do some like yard work or stuff at our admin office you don't necessarily have to be trained you just have to work with our volunteer coordinator to set up a day and and figure out what project nee done what does the training into for those i may be interested so it's called jars and it's i can't remember how many weeks it is i can get that information to you but it is a several week training where it educates about domestic violence as well as how in a proper healthy way to sist a domestic violence victims and then once you complete that training then you go to all our different offices and sites and you get a chance to see how each site operates and then from there the volunteer decides where they might like to work best so then they kind of start doing onsite training specific to whatever department they chose to wor in now depending on the project could i even because i'm under each team would i be able to help and volunteer do you have to be a specific age i think it's it might be eighteen or older to do the long term volunteering but we do have high school students do projects with us all the time and volunteer their time in that way so ok so earlier we talked about the safe house what is the safe house and how do people utilize it so the safe houses is basically just a house that we've converted into a shelter type residency so it's not just one big room and really the only difference to our house versus the houses that you know a student might live in is we have offices there and we do have staff there twenty four seven but basically it's for adults or adults with children that are feeling a domestic violence situation that has left them homeless so they can come into this safe house and not only have a safe place to stay but have a place that's away from the abusive person can teenagers come or do you have to be eighteen if they're coming by themselves they have to be can order but we do have teens that come with their mothers so how has the safe house like helped those how have you seen that personally i think just having the opportunity to not only obviously be physically safe because you're away from an abusive partner but when you're in an abusive relationship it gets very confusing very tiring and it gets hard to think and to plan your next move and i think what the safe house offers is a break from all of that and a chance to catch your breath along with having healthy people there that will kind of support you and in deciding what you want to do next gotcha so clear they want to a different know how can teachers help their students if they see them with an abusive relationship  school they've seen them or even in class similar to i was saying before if you see something say something probably not always best to say something to the couple together you know it's better to definitely with the victim approach them separately but also you can talk to the abusive partner too and and once again point out the behaviors and talking about how they're not healthy and how it's not right and how it won't be tolerated in school and also getting them connected with services  but also remaining not judge mental and not trying to take control over the situation because i feel like adults with the best of intentions especially with the anger people it's like i'll tell you what you need to do  and they start rattling off all these plans but it's really important just like we do with adult clients to empower teens to make their own decisions in regards to the relationship and what type of services they decide to say seek or not s but just keep providing the information and continue to be just a positive reinforcement in their life can actually make a huge difference and make them feel comfortable if you're not you have to do this you have to do this or that though i actually feel more comfortable coming and talking to what signs can teachers look out for because i know students are different in the way they behave around their friends and their family and teachers so what are certain signs and i think some of another hard thing with teens is i think sometimes  the behaviors are kind of thrown off as they're being teenagers but i think if you know your students pretty well you have a baseline for each of them and so what you want to look for is deviations from their normal behavior so if they're like a straight a student and now they're barely getting c's warning sign you know if they were someone that was really involved in school activities and now you know quitting all of them for no particular reason is there once a bright happy peppy student and now they look withdrawn and tired all the time time warning sign so you just want to take what you know about them already and see what kind of differences that you're seeing and not just assume that while they're  is going to teen things that you know that there actually might be a serious teen dating violence issue there is that similar to ways parents like things they can look out for to yeah absolutely you know you know your kids you know what they're like you know what they're into you know roughly what their behaviors are like if you start to see that change and especially if that's corresponding with the times they started dating someone there you go you have the warning signs that something's probably not right in that relationship so i'm sure there's been instances where kids aren't believed by their parents what can they do to maybe get their parents just say hey this is happening i need help i always strongly suggest if they feel comfortable to give us a call and do like a an empowerment session with me or talk to me on the on the hotline because sometimes what i'll do is then once we kind of build a relationship and we've kind of talked about the relationship will invite the parent or guardian into the next session and i'll kind mediate which can definitely help open up the lines of communication and get the parent to understand that this isn't something that they're overreacting about that this is a serious  situation you know it's important that they believe and support their child and this is something that can be maybe prevented but you can be warned about because those are there certain characteristics in a person that maybe make you think of this is unhealthy from the get right so obviously if they're controlling or possessive in any way if you hear things from their previous relationships sometimes those are easy to you know go oh it's a crazy x like they don't know what they're talking about or they're just mad because they're not with that person anymore but that could actually you know they could be telling the truth about you know what the warnings what happened in that relationship  any indication of violent behaviors or aggressive behaviors so maybe you haven't heard of them hitting a partner but maybe you've seen them punch a locker or break something in a classroom or something where you see that they have a lot of you know aggressive behaviors that could also be a warning sign also just not respecting boundaries which sometimes can look like a nice thing so you know my big sample is like you're going out on your first date and they show up with like an expensive piece of jewelry as like a first date get like that doesn't really match up with first date and where you're out of the relationship you know that seems like a really nice thing that's not a really good boundary to have on a first date of offering an expensive piece of jewelry to someone that you know you're just meeting and going out so even nice things if they don't seem appropriate for where you're out in the relationship could be a warning sign and what are some things those appear because i know like i earlier said you act differently around your peers your family your teachers what are some signs that may be different from set aside from those as someone's friends are more likely to see more specific behaviors than than parents or teachers we talked about things like you know grades dropping dropping out of activities you know things like that but as a friend you may actually see some of the altered physical altercations or you may see some of the text messages or you may notice that your friends really upset after they read a tax or a message from a partner and they may even tell you a bit about you know they're calling me names you know you might get more details as a friend and as a friend similar to an adult you want to keep these are not this isn't healthy you don't deserve this this isn't your fault and just keep repeating those things and encouraging them to speak to an adult whether that's us their parents someone here at the school that they trust because i think hearing it from a peer has more of an impact than necessarily coming from a teacher or parent or even me and say if i had a friend who maybe needed help and i went to their parent and they got mad what are some ways really try to explain why i did it you need help and you could say you know i was really concerned for your safety you know we've tried talking about it with you but you were really open to it and i get it you're scared  you don't want to think that your relationship is bad but i had to make a judgment choice and i really felt like your safety was in jeopardy and i had to go to an adult and they still may not understand  which is unfortunate but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do sometimes and it's not unusual clients get mad at me sometimes for some of the things i have to do i know sometimes i get mad at their parents teachers you know i think they feel like they're doing a really good job of hiding what's happening in their relationship in the fact that other people see it knows that it's embarrassing it's scary and so it's very common for them to get defensive and upset so that's a emotion a lot of people feel exactly yeah so how can you help them maybe realize like you shouldn't be embarrassed it's not your fault you did need help and you're getting help just keep repeating that which i know sounds silly but if you think about it  person is repeating constantly the other things this is all your fault i would have to do this if you would have done that and they're saying it to them verbal either sending it text messages you know they're leaving messages you know on facebook or snap chat i mean there's constantly feeding them that negative information and so for everyone on the other side trying to help them it's like you have to keep repeating the positive information and keep encouraging them to leave the relationship or to seek help to leave the relationship so what are some steps maybe to try and get out of the relationship i always suggest talking either calling us on the hotline talking to an adult because while the ultimate goal is to get a person out that relationship the most dangerous time for a person in an abusive relationship is actually while they're trying to leave and in the weeks and months after leaving that person so sometimes leaving right away isn't necessarily the safest way to do it so we just always encourage a victim to get help from someone whether our agency or doll to do a safety plan to figure out what is the safest way so for example don't break up you know alone at your house or their house you know go on public go to a coffee shop go to the mall go somewhere in public so you know hopefully they'll be less likely to do anything because they are in a public place if they do start to do something there's plenty of people there to intervene and help keep you safe but gottschall well it looks like it's all the time we have for today thank you again for kami for anyone not to colors an abusive relationship or know someone in a bad situation like the ones we have discussed today contact any of the numbers