But many cases aren’t reported, Kura says. Roughly an equal share of teens have hurt others.
Department of Education fact sheet from 2015. About one in three people between the ages of 14 and 20 has been hurt by dating violence, says a U.S. Globally, almost one in four girls aged 15 to 19 already has faced physical or sexual violence if they’ve had an intimate partner, the World Health Organization estimates.Īdd in other forms of abuse, and the numbers go up. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, combines data for girls and boys. teens experienced physical or sexual dating violence in the past year. “People want to assume that it won’t happen to them,” Kura says. Her goal is to prevent dating violence and to help others who’ve been hurt. There, she studies public health and social work. Now in her early 30s, Kura is a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The young man’s arrest for an unrelated crime finally ended his attempts to contact her. For years afterward, though, he kept trying to get back into her life. After about a year and a half, she broke up with the older teen. Five tips to consider when dating goes wrong And if she tried to talk with him about these problems, the boy blamed her. Kura felt she couldn’t tell others how he treated her, because they all liked him. He cozied up to her mother and brother, too. Her abuser wheedled his way into her social group. Or, he deliberately let her see him snuggling up with another girl. At other times the older teen insulted her by comparing her body to others’. At times, he got her drunk and then took advantage of her. If she didn’t, for example, he might leave her somewhere without a ride home. The boy pressured her to do sexual things, even if she felt unsure or said no. “He could make me laugh, and he was charming,” she recalls.Īfter they were in a relationship, Kura began to see the bad. As a high school freshman, she felt flattered when a popular senior boy said she was beautiful. “I saw all the good things in the very beginning,” says Erika Kura.