Teens connect, talk on relationship violence

A young man raised his hand and asked the discussion group members what they thought about his partner throwing his phone into a wall and then screaming at him.

Others in the group then began sharing their own experiences with dating violence and began brainstorming ideas on how they could find ways to avoid those situations.

It was only the group’s third meeting, but that question and the response it generated from the other high school students who were participating was precisely the point, said Children’s Inn therapist Mikaela Campbell.

“They were able to connect with one another because some of the students in that group could relate to that student on a very personal level,” Campbell said.


Campbell coordinates the Children’s Inn outreach program known as the Empower group. It started during the last school year at Washington High School as a group program focused on talking about dating relationship violence.

Dating violence has been a persistent issue for teens. According to the 2011 South Dakota Youth Risk Behaviors Survey, about 13 percent of the state’s high school students and been physically attacked by their boyfriend or girlfriend.

The survey also showed that 10 percent of high school students reported having been physically forced to have sex.

Since 1999, there has been no significant change in either of those numbers, according to the Department of Education’s 1991 to 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Trend Report.

The idea behind the Empower group is to provide a place for students to gather together to share their experiences with dating, said Washington High School counselor Laura Meile, who coordinated with Campbell to bring students to the Empower group.

“I think one of the benefits is just giving students a chance to interact and being able to recognize what a healthy relationship looks like,” Meile said.

For Campbell, the hope is to at least partially have an effect on the number of people who find themselves victims of domestic violence later in life. She said many of the adults she sees at the Children’s Inn first experienced violence from a partner while they were dating, sometimes while they were dating in high school.

“Students are experiencing violence in their dating relationships. … I think there’s a mentality that that’s just teenage stuff,” Campbell said.

Since the Empower program was piloted last year at Washington, it has grown and evolved. It now is in two Sioux Falls high schools — Washington, and another school Campbell said she wasn’t able to name.

The group meets once a week for six weeks during different class periods to make sure each of the participants doesn’t miss the same class every week.

The scope of the group also has evolved, Meile said. The focus remains on dating relationships, but much of the discussion has been applied to friendships and parents as well, she said, which will help the teens through school and life.

“Everything goes back to relationships,” Meile said.

Source: http://www.argusleader.com