Did you know, the most recent crime survey for England and Wales found that 12.6% of girls aged 16-19 experienced domestic abuse in the past year, and 6.6% of boys.
Girls are more likely to have older partners which puts them at greater risk of abuse from a young age, with 95% of those experiencing intimate partner violence being female, 94% of their perpetrators being male.
Jealous and controlling behaviours are the highest statistics, with 80% of 16-17 and 18+ year olds experiencing them at the hands of a partner.
According to Safe Lives, young people experience the highest rates of domestic violence of any age group.
What does this tell us? Or rather, what should this be telling us, but for some reason we are ignoring it? Safe lives states this group are not visible to services.
Young people are experiencing abuse in new ways, through technology and social media, living their lives in a fast paced, mature, virtual world. Whether it is through in-education, fear of opening up or reaching out for help, fear of being judged, having watched the same behaviours at home and seeing them as ‘the norm’; whatever the reason, it is a reason too many.
These behaviours need to be spotted and stamped out, immediately.
We must educate. When I was a young girl, at my single sex school, I sat through the most boring assemblies imaginable. No one listened, a full audience of hundreds of young, impressionable women, and an opportunity missed. What if those assemblies had been used used to educate us on spotting red flags, boundaries, coercive control, controlling and abusive behaviours, gaslighting… maybe I would’ve spotted the behaviours sooner. Maybe, I wouldn’t have ended up another statistic.
I have a teenage daughter. She’s on social media like all other girls her age. She doesn’t keep still, the generation of TikTok dance routines and living life with a soundtrack. Constantly racking up followers, and I know, from experience with her already, some of those followers are not who they say they are. We’ve had ‘the chat’, and some tears and some phone confiscation time, but ultimately all we can do is educate her and keep reiterating that she can come to us about anything. Will she listen? Did you listen to your parents when you were a teenager…? We are incredibly open with our kids, in hopes that they will be open with us in return.
I would hope that knowing my story, she would be less likely to stick around if a partner started displaying abusive behaviours, but, I am also a realist, and I know how clever perpetrators can be, cunning and charming and sucking you in until it’s too late to turn back…
I started to write again. This time a book for the younger generation, for girls like my daughter who need to hear the ugly truth. The excitement of ‘that guy’, and how like a fisherman he’ll get you hooked, then reel you in, slowly, slowly, loosening the line every now and then to give you the false idea that you are in control, then pulling harder than before and catching you in his net, unable to escape.
This book won’t be just a story, it wouldn’t appeal to those who live in the virtual world of Instagram, TikTok, phones and Snapchat, it’ll replicate the world they know. I’m excited about this one, and in a way, I guess I’ve written it for the younger 16 year old me, the book I wish I had read, the book that could have changed my future.
‘Dolphins’ will be available on Amazon at the beginning of August. More information coming soon.
