National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline

A couple of posts ago I talked about Teen Dating Abuse Awareness Week. This week, the Houston Chronicle posted an article about the Nat'l Teen Dating Abuse Helpline as they celebrate their one year anniversary.

The article gives a history about the battered woment's movement and how it has been able to reduce the number of victims and a description of the helpline center and its workers/volunteers. The helpline is "[h]oused in a florescent-lit room on the ground floor of the council's Austin office, the new helpline more closely resembles a college dorm room than a national nerve center for teen dating abuse counseling. IKEA desks and artwork line the walls, and a couch is available for napping in the back corner." In comparison, the National Domestic Violence Hotline which is on the second floor "where phone operators, called advocates, sit in a large room filled with cubicles while a white noise machine drowns out their individual conversations."

The teen helpline is different in that they use mostly chat engines to communicate with teens and have basically annonimous conversations about their relationships or their behavior.

Also, "[a]t the teen helpline, callers often seek advice not on filing a protective order, but on telling their parents about being hit or arranging safe places at school away from an abusive classmate they had been dating. Others call with questions about Web stalking or being harassed through text messaging."

"I think we realized some time ago that the violence happens earlier than we were admitting," said Debby Tucker, one of the council's (Texas Council on Family Violence - www.tcfv.org) founders. "But it's taken a long time to arrange services for young people and figure out effective strategies."

I think it is great that this information is available to teens and people in general. I hope that they can get the help that they need.

ARE YOU A VICTIM?
Does something about your relationship scare you? Take this quiz to see if you might be in trouble. If you answer yes to even one, you may be in an abusive relationship.

Does your boyfriend/girlfriend:
• Look at you or act in ways that scare you?
• Act jealous or possessive?
• Put you down or criticize you?
• Try to control where you go, what you wear or what you do?
• Text or IM you excessively?
• Blame you for the hurtful things they say and do?
• Threaten to kill or hurt you or themselves if you leave them?
• Try to stop you from seeing or talking to friends and family?
• Try to force you to have sex before you're ready?
• Hit, slap, push or kick you?

To get help:
• loveisrespect.org
• 1-866-331-9474
• 1-866-331-8453
Source: Loveisrespect.org , National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline

Or you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or their website at http://www.ndvh.org/.

You are not alone, there is help out there. The advocates at these helplines WILL NOT force you to do anything you don't want to.