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Preventing Teen Dating Violence

Avni Wadhwani

Malcolm Astley gave a warning before he talked about the murder of his teenage daughter by her ex-boyfriend: “If my tears come, they’re good tears of caring.” Mr. Astley has devoted his life to providing answers to why abusers batter, and how society can prevent it.  


According to the Boston Magazine, in 2011, Mr. Astley’s eighteen-year-old daughter Lauren Astley was strangled with a bungee cord, had her neck slashed, and then was thrown into a marsh after going over to her ex-boyfriend’s house to talk about their breakup.


Since then, Mr. Astley has created the Lauren Dunne Astley Memorial Fund, a fund in honor of his daughter that goes toward “promoting healthy teen relationships, the arts, and community service,” according to the website.


 A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016 fact sheet says, “21% of [teenage] females and 10% of [teenage] males experienced physical and/or sexual dating violence” in the United States. That means young women are about twice as likely to be the victims of dating violence than young men.


In Mr. Astley’s words, teenage dating violence is primarily “a male problem.” It’s largely men who perpetrate violence, and it’s “the males who need to solve it.”


Men abusing women in relationships goes back centuries. However, just like the U.S. “ended the monarchy...slavery...women not being able to vote...and the ignoring of children with special needs,” Mr. Astley said, society can end relationship violence.


  The first step to preventing relationship violence is addressing why males abuse. PBS says that “fear of rejection, emotional withdrawal, and/or abandonment are major factors that...cause...men to be violent.”


Many of these factors can root from what the program Emerge calls “negative self-talk.” Emerge counsels and educates men, primarily heterosexual, to stop domestic violence.


Walter Kikuchi, office manager at Emerge, said “the negative thoughts...people have...can lead to abusive actions in an attempt to control the other person. In addition, bottling up these thoughts and forcing yourself not to act on them...often leads to an explosive incident.”


Debra Altschiller buttresses Kikuchi’s point, naming power and control to be the two factors that relationship abuse comes down to. Altschiller is a New Hampshire representative and community liaison for HAVEN, a domestic and sexual violence crisis center in New Hampshire.


Mr. Astley added, “If you think your world is falling apart, you clamp on” and start to overcontrol.


With this feeling of failing to have power and control comes a deep-seated shame. “A lot of violence comes from shame,” Mr. Astley said. “The pressure-cooker that our society has created for boys and men...is grooming...our males towards shame.”


Many of the values the U.S. instills in its boys, such as courage and strength, exacerbate male stereotypes, like physical strength and keeping emotions bottled up. The saying ‘boys don’t cry’ speaks to society’s very culture: one that encourages young men to “be alone...with pain, shame, and hopelessness...and eventually, rage,” Mr. Astley said.


These are all normal emotions for any teenager to have. It’s when young men deal with these feelings alone that they become potentially dangerous.

  

“If young people are recognizing the signs [of an abusive relationship] but...there are no trusted channels to circulate the information and allow someone to intervene,” Mr. Astley said, the information becomes useless.


Teenagers, in particular boys, need “safe places to tell about and [get] support for [when they are] in grieving,” he said. This includes grieving due to a breakup or rejection.


Mr. Astley expressed the need for a safe space where teenagers could receive support for the process of grieving, which includes loss and rejection, recovery, and eventually new connections.“It’s a process we need to be much more conscious about,” he said. “Acknowledge the incredible power of our human capacities to connect deeply.”


This ability to connect deeply means that breakups can be excruciating. “Your sense of who you are is tied up in another person,” Mr. Astley explained. “If people aren’t comfortable disconnecting, there can be a lot of pain and rage.”


Among young men, this pain leads to shame and isolation. “Shame is the perception that you’re not even worthy of being in the challenging adventure of life,” Mr. Astley said.


In order to prevent these emotions from becoming volatile, Mr. Astley recommends schools provide “breakup resources,” like “ongoing breakup support groups.”


Data shows that high schoolers tell their peers first when they go through a breakup. “When you hear someone close to you is going through a breakup, stop. Make sure they have someone,” Mr. Astley advised high school students.


Another thing teenagers can change is the language used around breaking up, such as he or she got dumped. “We need to neutralize the language,” Mr. Astley said. “No, you weren’t dumped. The fit wasn’t good.”  


Additionally, emotions like anger and hatred must be addressed, rather than discouraged. “If someone’s feeling angry, there’s a need not being met,” Mr. Astley said. That need must be recognized.


More than stopping violence at an adolescent level, prevention needs to be the goal at a young age. The best way to prevent teen dating violence and escape from the corroding shame many young men feel is “feeling good deeply about yourself,” said Mr. Astley.


“If you don’t have a core, the process of a breakup can be incredibly rattling,” he said. The key to developing a strong sense of self-confidence is the way in which children are raised.


In Mr. Astley’s document Liberating Our Youth from Violence: Looking Underneath the Anger, he suggests “providing from pre-school on...experiences and education to build deep self-respect and humility as foundations for resilience.”


This also means guiding children on how to feel sadness in a healthy way by “providing tools in grieving and supporting others in grief from an early age, to support the sharing of pain and caring.”


While these values may seem to contradict the stereotypical traits we encourage American men to have, Mr. Astley suggested that the ability to emphasize and have the “courage and strength to care” is just as important as traditionally-valued masculine traits. He even encouraged young men to cry, explaining how it is a release for pent up emotions.


“I used to tell my daughter to let it flow,” he said. Suddenly, his face seized up and he crumpled into sobs. It lasted no more than a few seconds, and he didn’t acknowledge it once it was over, only continued speaking.


For all that Mr. Astley has been through, he remains optimistic that society will change for the better. “There’s tremendous hope, don’t lose hope about it,” he said. He paused for a moment and swallowed. “Keep on sparkling.”

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