teen domestic/school violence
Linda Purrington (lpurring@earthlink.net)
Fri, 19 Jun 1998 16:06:19 -0700
Once again, on a societywide level, when you begin to deal with domestic
violence in the community, you have made the first major step toward
modeling appropriate adult behavior for teens. If a father bashes his
wife, and there is repeated ignoring of the mother's battering, then the
children in that household are liable to choose variants of those adult
role models to enact in their own lives.
My daughter's first experience of this was in a "very nice" preschool;
she came home visibly shaken and told me "R--- says women bleed all over
the place and need to get beat up sometimes; that's what his father
said." His father was a prominent lawyer in this community, and those
attitudes prevail in this community and in the county DA's office. They
produced the environment that led to Petaluma I and II school sexual
harassment cases. This rural county has three times the child abuse that
Oakland, California's county of Alameda has--the largest city in the San
Francisco Bay Area. The connnection between child abuse and domestic
violence is abundantly clear.
Similarly, on a schoolwide level, when you begin to deal with teen
dating violence seriously, you reduce it through vicarious learning--and
you raise the number of girls willing to report it. Note that while
sexual assault and battery/teen dating violence are criminal acts, the
school's response to incidents may also involve violations of Title IX
of the 1972 Education Amendments, because they interfere with the right
of the victim, and by example, the entire class of U.S. girls, to an
equal education.
Linda Purrington
Title IX Advocates
lpurring@earthlink.net
---------------------------------------------
SSmith wrote:
>
> Marie (and others):
>
> In the school setting, is dating violence treated with a
> similar "hard line" approach for juveniles as the domestic
> violence process for adults you described in your message?
> Would you encourage such an approach? Why or why not?
>
> Susan
>
> Susan J. Smith
> EDEQUITY Moderator
> <edequity-admin@mail.edc.org>
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
> Subject: RE: Boston, Quincy, San Diego, etc.
> Author: "marie De Santis" <rdvjustice@hotmail.com> at Internet
> Date: 6/19/98 12:24 AM
>
> That may be true in your department, Herb, but four years of Senate
> Hearings in the early 1990's found that police departments throughout
> the US systematicallyt denied women equal protection of the law in
> domestic violence and rape....
>
> Marie
>
> "marie De Santis" <rdvjustice@hotmail.com>