April Slone of the Beaman Home in Warsaw spoke to a family and consumer sciences class of eighth-graders at Wawasee Middle School Thursday afternoon. She addressed the topic of teen dating violence. (Photo by Tim Ashley)

Eighth-graders, or more specifically middle school aged kids, are starting to consider and enter into stronger boy-girl relationships. Though far less common a generation or two ago, middle school students are involved in dating relationships in today’s world.

And with the increasing use of the Internet and cellphones to communicate, it can create numerous concerns about teen dating violence.

In an effort to help expose more middle school age students to healthy dating relationships, April Slone, outreach coordinator for the Beaman Home in Warsaw, spoke to eighth-graders in Darcy Hively’s family and consumer sciences classes Thursday and Friday at Wawasee Middle School. Beaman Home provides shelter and services for victims of domestic abuse.

As part of her role at the Beaman Home, Slone has spoken to middle school students in Warsaw schools and also at Milford Middle School earlier in the school year. “I want to give them warning signs (of teen dating violence) because they are starting to think about dating at this age,” Slone said before an approximately 30-minute presentation Thursday afternoon at WMS. “I want them to know these things before they get to high school.”

Slone used the example of Heather Norris, a student at Indiana University who was murdered by her boyfriend. “She grew up in Indiana, so it can happen in this state,” Slone said, though she noted murder is an extreme result of an unhealthy teen relationship and does not occur often.

Norris met her boyfriend while in high school and soon was subjected to emotional abuse. Strong in academics with many healthy friendships, she began to be cut off from those friendships because her boyfriend did not like her friends and wanted nothing to do with them. He also sat in the car and honked the horn instead of getting out and coming inside her house when picking her up for a date.

Eventually the emotional abuse escalated to physical abuse and he began to beat Norris, but she came back to him. Ultimately the worst possible result occurred in the form of murder.

Heather’s mother, Debbie Norris, lobbied for and was successful to have a state law passed, sometimes referred to as “Heather’s Law,” requiring the Indiana Department of Education to develop educational materials addressing teen dating violence. A couple of days before Slone’s visit to WMS, Hively noted Slone’s presentation fit in well with a class unit on communications, which involves goal setting and decision making.

Slone told the eighth-graders they should report noticeable changes they see in their friends to an adult. “You really don’t know everything, despite what you may think, and none of you has a degree in counseling yet,” Slone said. “It’s not up to you to fix the problem, but you need to tell an adult about it.”

Statistics for teen dating violence are sobering. One in three girls and one in five boys have experienced it. The boys numbers have doubled in this generation, Slone noted, and largely due to the Internet and text messaging.

“Girls will say things about their boyfriends on Facebook they would never say to their faces,” she said, and though it is on a computer or cellphone, it can still damage a person’s self-esteem.

She stressed Internet safety to the students, such as not “friending” people on Facebook they don’t know. And students should be careful what they post on their status updates because those are easily accessible. “You don’t need to tell everybody where you are going to be and when,” Slone said.

She also cautioned against giving Facebook passwords to anybody other than parents. Slone emphasized Facebook accounts, as well as cellphones, “can be used against you,” such as with posting inappropriate photos. Some will go to great lengths to make sure photos get in the hands of the wrong people in order to embarrass someone.

The eighth-graders were asked to fill out surveys after Slone’s presentation.