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Kristen Evans Professor Mahaffey ENGL 1102-100 28 January 2013 No Excuse For Abuse Exigence Hitting, slapping, punching, speaking negatively, and so much more are all common signs of relationship. Despite these being clear signs something is going wrong, are people in these relationships aware of what it is? Everyone in an abusive relationship needs help getting out and not many people know exactly what to do. Instead we watch our friends or family suffer as opposed to giving valuable and credible information to assist them. From Junior to Senior year in High School, I was involved in a social awareness group called Teens for Change. In this all girls group, we were taught in detail about the issues teens go through. We were taught reasons why they happen as well as ways to prevent the number of incidents in our community. One of the biggest issues we discussed and the one that stuck with me the most was dating violence among teens and adults. This issue should be one of the biggest issues not being dealt with in our community along with drug and alcohol abuse. This is not an issue that just comes from nowhere, there is a cycle to this madness. It begins with the incident, followed by more aggression or another incident. Typically after the this, the abuser becomes sentimental and asks for forgiveness, and the victim will forgive them and they pretend it never happens. Later on, it happens again and they are going back through the cycle again. Relationship violence can and will lead to so many homicides, suicides, and many other awful cases that will not end well.

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While there are some stories that have a good ending, many do not and it is important that we address this issue and are available to help if someone needs it. Inquiry How can we break the cycle of relationship violence? Dating violence can physically and mentally torture women and men in ways and because this project is about looking into the future of a certain topic I want to know how can this crime can make or break people in the future. I also would like to answer why do people make certain assumptions about dating violence? What can be done to prevent dating violence? Is there a certain gender, race, religion, or any specific characteristic that makes a person more vulnerable to dating violence than other people? If we can find ways to prevent dating violence, can we gradually reduce the number of cases for future references? Finally I want to investigate why victims feel as if it is their fault or have some guilt for being abused? Is it a psychological thing? Can girls be the abusers too? Why do guys not want to admit that they are being abused? Is it their pride they do not want to destroy? What helped them overcome it? I personally believe that anyone can become a victim of dating violence, but I feel as if the ones that are the main target are the ones that you can push over in the relationship. These are the people that do not really care what their partner does or if they do care it is not shown because they do not want their partner to get mad. In my opinion, this issue will forever be ignored by the public because no one wants to get in the middle of the conflict. I also think girls get it worse in an abusive relationship than boys that are getting abused by girls. However, finding out how boys get abused in the relationship will be interesting to compare to girls. Method

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I will first complete my primary research by finding out he assumptions and causes of relationship violence. I hope to spend a few days doing this so it should be completed by Monday, February fourth. I have emailed the young lady I want to interview and will be conducting the interview via email. This should be done by the end of the week of the fourth. While I am in the process of interviewing, I will be looking up some stories of victims in the situation but focusing more on how it affected them psychologically. This should also be completed by the end of this upcoming week. By the eleventh of February I should have all my information that I need to complete my research paper. Hopefully I will have all my questions answered as well as learning new information that I did not already know.

Kristen Evans

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Professor Mahaffey ENGL 1102 18 February 2013 Annotated Bibliography: No Excuse For Abuse Deborah Schipper, et al. Dating Violence Victimization Across The Teen Years: Abuse Frequency, Number Of Abusive Partners, And Age At First Occurence. BMC Public Health. 12.1 (2012): 637-646. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Feb. 2013 Evaluation: Students from Ohio State University and faculty from other public health places conducted this experiment to test to view correlations between time and relationships. This source lacks background history about the researches, therefore I am unable to tell how credible they are. The experiment is testing students at different ages and recording their actions. Gist: By experimenting with age and gender, the students and faculty were able to describe some common signs of relationship violence across the years within teenagers. Research showed that 64.7% of females and 61.7% of males reported relationship violence over a six year period. Some of the common signs they found were the partner being controlling, name calling, hitting, slapping, pressuring sex, threatening, and many more. These results show how age and gender contribute to these unwanted signs within a relationship.

Evans, Kristen. Re: Interview. Jane Doe. 7 Feb. 2013. E-mail. Evaluation: While being in my service club at school, I was able to meet a victim of relationship violence, which is whom I have chosen to interview. She is able to give accurate emotional feelings and advice to those that have or could possibly be experiencing relationship violence.

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This young woman has an ample amount of creditability because she is able to recount for her experiences. Gist: Jane Doe was a victim of relationship violence that I met through volunteering in my social awareness group in school. She is an example of a young women that was in an abusive relationship that was about to walk about learning so much about herself and life. Doe looks at the experience as being a life lesson because she has become a stronger and more intelligent person. In the interview she discusses how society can contribute to this disease as well as some of the most stressful parts about her two year battle with abuse.

Evans, Kristen. Re: Research Project for Kristen. Kenyetta Richmond. 4 Feb. 2013. E-mail. Evalution: Ms. Richmond is a consultant for many societal problems, but most importantly relationship violence. She has worked with many women and men helping them out of tough situations and has excellent advice and knowledge about the cycle of relationship violence. Gist: Being a consultant for women, she discusses the cycle of abuse being with the honeymoon phase and ending with the explosion and then it starts all over again. With each phase she speaks about some key signs to look for. For example, in the second phase, known as tension building, the victim should begin to notice the abuser trying to take control and maybe an incident that really set the abuser off and they begin to change their attitude towards you, but for the worst. She also gives some advice for what women and men should do if they are being abused and assures them that it is NOT their fault in any shape, form, or fashion.

Mansour, Dina. The right to Domestic Violence. Women. Reset

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Dialogues on Civilizations, 3 May 2010. Web. 15 Feb. 2013. Evaluation: This website was made by a group of Italians that want to view societal issues throughout the world and show people how a certain societys issue is acceptable. Their goal is expose these issues in hopes of finding a solution for them. Gist: Relationship violence is viewed at differently in many societies but needless to say it is still wrong. In this article, the author shows us how relationship violence is considered a norm in societies such as Egypt. The author agrees that relationship violence is wrong, but the article shows how violence is good for some societies, which would offer a different point of view for my paper. We consider any type of violence to be wrong, but couples in Egypt consider this normal and okay.

Teen Talk. Teen Dating Violence Facts vs. Myths. Between Friends, n.d. Web. 4 Feb. 2013 Evaluation: Between Friends is a non profit organization that aims to break the cycle of dating violence with hopes to build a strong and healthier community. The members of the organization work with victims and provides information to the public about dating violence and what a community should be aware of and how to stop it. Gist: For this website, the focus for me was the Teen Talk page. This page discusses some common signs of abuse among teens and the proper way of avoiding them or getting out of the situation. The page also includes facts and myths page where they broke down the myths and correct them with the proper fact to go with that myth. For example, society believes that when the teen is being abused, they normally will tell a trusted adult, but that is rarely the case. Most teens keep the abuse to themselves or if they do tell they tell it to other teens that they trust.

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Synthesis Although we are able to see relationship violence in television shows, movies, books, and hear about it on the news, being able to sit in front of someone that actually has gone through the cycle of abuse makes everything seem more real. With the research I have gathered, the voices are all the same, relationship violence is wrong and something needs to be done about it. According to Ms. Richmond, the cycle of abuse consists of a three stage series. It begins in the honeymoon phase where everything in the relationship is great, the couple is happy and there's no tension or strife (Richmond). Following this we have the tension building phase where controlling issues begin to come out and finally the explosion where the abuser expresses one of the three types of abuse, verbal, physical, or emotional. By incorporating all these aspects we can look into Jane Does situation and incorporate these phases. One of the assumptions made by multiple people is relationship violence rarely happens (Teen Talk). Going with this assumption, the researchers from the experiment can proudly say that, 64.7% of females and 61.4% of males reported dating violence or victimization between the ages of thirteen and nineteen (Schipper 1). The statistics they gathered prove that the assumptions society makes about relationship violence are wrong. This information is key to present in hopes of improving and getting rid of this problem. The question is, where do we begin? We first must begin with helping the victim. I interviewed her and asked if she knew certain information before being in the morphed into the cycle, would that have helped her get out easier or made a difference. She responded with, it absolutely would have made a difference. This young lady was unaware of the concept of relationship/dating violence. With society playing such a pivotal role in the thoughts and actions we make, Jane Doe needed her

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society to help her with information about what to look for and how to get out of it. The next step to getting rid of this disease is educating our society about this problem. After all society is the biggest influence on setting and continuing trends. The majority of the information that I gathered agree that relationship violence is wrong and something needs to be done about it, but what if a society says its okay? What is hitting, yelling, beating, or any other form of physical, verbal, or emotional abuse is considered a norm for a young lady? Dina Mansour found a society that accepts this, but still recognizes that it is wrong. In Egypt, Mansour found a young lady that has constantly been abused by her partner, but her society finds nothing wrong with it. According to Sharia law, man has the right to discipline his wife (Mansour). However, it is clear that Egyptian men take this law to the extreme. One of the problems that is noted in this article is that internationally, people have done little to fix this. We are able to see that relationship violence occurs everywhere around the world and to anyone, but what should we do to fix this? As stated before, we need to educate our society who then can educate and help others and victims. Not having valuable and credible information will not help the case. Some information that I am lacking is abuse from a guys perspective. When I asked my friends about abuse on guys, everyone agreed that it can happen to them, but two of ten people said it is probably not common. It is good that eighty percent of the people I interviewed were able to recognize that it can happen to guys, but it is probably more common than what we see. The experiment conducted indicates the most information about abuse on men. When looking at the tables from the experiment, we can conclude that abuse happens to men, however, the occurrence of certain cases have a higher percentage on women than men.

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The information that I have gathered so far is very helpful and despite the sources not going against each other, they each offer a perspective from a different point of view for relationship violence. This will be helpful when I incorporate everything together. I value their honesty and credible information that I have been provided and not one of the sources I have found seems to be unrealistic.