“Is it OK for my boyfriend to tell me I can’t hang out with my other guy friends?”
Research shows it’s not a question many young adults feel comfortable asking their parents. But Jayla Leverenz, a peer teen advocate for Middle Way House, hears some version of it regularly from her classmates.
“Is it OK if my girlfriend goes through my text messages?”
“People aren’t aware that abuse can take place outside of the physical hitting and pushing and things like that,” said Leverenz, a junior at Bloomington High School South.
That’s where a peer teen advocate can make a difference. Middle Way House, a nonprofit domestic violence shelter and sexual assault resource provider, trains older high school students to work with fellow students who have questions about relationships or are seeking a confidante after a sexual assault.
“It just makes them more comfortable,” Leverenz said. “Hopefully it will encourage people to seek support, because we’re the same age and can connect with them better.”
A White House campaign against sexual assault claims that one in five women is sexually assaulted while in college. But violence against Hoosier women starts much earlier, according to data from the Indiana Youth Institute released Monday.
In Indiana, at least one in six high school girls will be a victim of sexual assault before turning 18, according to IYI’s 2016 Kids Count Data Book. In the past year, 9.8 percent of high school students reported they were physically forced to have sex when they did not want to — 14.5 percent of girls and 5.2 percent of boys.
“I think parents should really just be aware of the fact that this is something kids are scared to talk to adults about,” said Linda Hershman, program director for Girls Inc. of Monroe County. “If kids are really unsure who to turn to, to ask about these issues, they’re a lot less likely to get help.”
Indiana’s rate of high school dating violence has been above the national average for more than 20 years, according to a 2014 study from Ball State University. In the past year, 10.3 percent of high school students nationwide were hit, slammed into something, injured with an object or weapon or endured other physical abuse at the hands of someone they were dating, according to IYI data. In Indiana, 11.3 percent of high school students report being physically hurt by a boyfriend or girlfriend.
“They are behaving in the same kinds of behavior that is normalized around them,” said Colleen Yeakle, coordinator of prevention initiatives for the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Over the course of their lifetime, 40.4 percent of women in Indiana are raped, physically assaulted, stalked or experience some other form of violence at the hands of an intimate partner, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.