Ohio State public health professor Kenneth Steinman’s research helped Gov. Ted Strickland sign “Tina’s Law” on Dec. 29, requiring Ohio schools to add teen-dating violence prevention to their curriculum.
“The key part of the law is prevention,” Steinman said. “Eighteen- to 24-year-olds are the single-most likely group to experience intimate partner abuse, so by having the prevention programs in high schools, we hope to decrease the violence in those people’s futures.”
Females and males will take the course, whether they have experienced intimate violence or not.
Lisa Leininger is an OSU graduate administrative associate for It’s Abuse, an organization that raises awareness among students about relationship abuse. Leininger said it is important that the law is hinged on preventative education. “Once people become abusers it’s hard for them to change,” she said. “I think the law’s fantastic.”
Leininger is conducting research on OSU students’ attitudes about relationship abuse to complete her master’s degree in public health.
“Past research at OSU suggests approximately 32 percent of students have experienced some kind of intimate abuse,” Leininger said. “Recent research that I’ve seen shows around 40 percent.”
Steinman said it is hard to define romantic or intimate abuse.
“Abuse can be emotional and physical, ranging from checking a partner’s e-mail to physical hitting,” he said. “It’s remarkably common and consequential, but people don’t realize it.”
There is growing evidence that suggests emotional abuse can cause gastro-intestinal and cardio-vascular problems, Steinman said.
Some of the most prevalent consequences of relationship abuse are academic difficulty, depression and suicide.
Nancy Radcliffe, an employee at the Student Wellness Center, Sexual Violence Education and Support program, has worked at the university for about five years, helping victims cope with domestic abuse.
“Students I see usually have experienced different kinds of abuse,” Radcliffe said. He said most abuse begins because the abuser “thinks they have a sense of entitlement to act that way.”
In Ohio, 19,000 females are victims of intimate violence a year, Steinman said. Last year, “around 43,000 women smoked cigarettes, 15,899 give birth to live babies, about 10,000 women got into motor vehicle accidents and about 12,000 contracted Chlamydia,” he said. “When compared to other problems females face, you gain a sense of how serious a problem intimate abuse is.”
Leininger added that the number of female victims could be higher.
“The stigma and the dangers that are attached with abuse can cause women to be afraid to tell friends and family,” she said. There is a “delicate balance” between the assumption of privacy that intimate relationships have and the fact that abuse needs to try to be eliminated, she said.
