'These hands won't hurt' educating teens on dating violence

Date: 12/7/2009

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



LONGMEADOW -- It often takes something shocking to grab people's attention. Take, for example, this fact: one in three teenagers report knowing a friend or peer who has been hit, punched, kicked, slapped, choked or physically hurt by their partner.

That statistic comes from a 2005 Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited. It caught the attention of the students in Megan Schwartz's community service learning class at Longmeadow High School. Her students wanted to educate more people about this frightening trend.

Their work was noticed by Do Something, a national non-profit that allows youth to share the causes they care about. Do Something awarded senior Alyssa Korman a $250 grant to promote teen dating abuse awareness. She and her class did so on Dec. 3, Liz Claiborne's national It's Time to Talk Day.

"It [abuse] can be emotional, physical or verbal," Korman explained. "There are so many who could potentially be harmed."

Nine seniors from the community service class, which aims to help as many people as possible in the Greater Springfield area, came together to work on the day of awareness. Their goal was not just to work with seniors but the entire high school, since the statistic on dating abuse came from a freshman health class.

To raise awareness, the group passed out 333 stickers -- about one-third of the high school's population -- with the phrase "These Hands Won't Hurt" on them to illustrate how many people this form of abuse affects.

"Instead of asking people to donate money for a cause, we wanted to do something more involved," Grace Spelman, a member of the group, explained. That included talking about abuse during the morning announcements, passing out the stickers and setting up a table in the cafeteria during lunch to distribute information and sell bracelets. The sale of the bracelets, made up of black and blue beads with a single white bead in the center, representing hope, will benefit the battered womens' shelter at the Springfield YWCA.

"I have friends who have been at least once abused verbally; some who have been physically," Korman said. "A lot of the time it's the people who always say 'I wouldn't stand for it,' but they do. We're hoping to educate people that this is not normal."

Korman mentioned one specific incident she remembered seeing, when a fellow high school boy pushed a girl against a wall and slapped her.

"You can see physical abuse, but it's so hard to control emotional and verbal [abuse]," she added.

Korman, Spelman and the other members of the awareness group had high hopes for their project. "I think it's great because when I was a freshman, I didn't get involved in things like this. This involves everybody," Zakia Natour said.

Health teacher Meaghan Roy noted that it was interesting to get the different perspectives on this topic from the various grade levels.

"It's nice to raise awareness schoolwide," she said. "We're trying to be proactive with this program."

"We talk about other topics, other forms of abuse like alcohol and drugs, but this [dating abuse] hasn't really been touched on," Spelman stated. "It's never really talked about. It's an unknown world out there."

It's a world the group is trying to draw attention to. "The [333] stickers are a start," group member Dani Dickstein noted.

For more information on domestic violence and how to help end it, visit www.loveisnotabuse.com.