Response Paper 10
1. The topic I want to talk about in the text is dating violence and rape (p. 323-4). Most of the time
when an individual thinks of a relationship they assume that it is exciting, loving, and fun, but
sometimes relationships can grow to be dangerous. A shocking statistic in the text states that
nine percent of high school students and one-third of unmarried adults under thirty have
experienced or used physical violence in a dating relationships in the past year! Often times the
individuals suffering in this violence do not report it to anyone for multiple reasons.
2. The reason I chose this topic is because my identical twin sister was in an extremely abusive
relationship for about two and a half years before she finally escaped from it. She gave many
reasons for not leaving the relationship. The first excuses when the family started getting hints
of the abuse were that “he is going to change”, “he really is a good person at heart”, “we may
have bad times, but we have really good times too”, and “but I really love him”. Then he started
getting arrested a couple of times for hitting my sister and public intoxication and my family
knew there must be more going on. When we tried talking to her about it he became even more
controlling and forced her to move across the country to California with him to live with his
family. Once she moved we barely heard from her because he wouldn’t let her talk to anyone. I
know at this point the abuse was bad. He tore up her belongings, sold her out to other men, and
raped her and beat her often. I think she honestly feared for her life and was embarrassed to try
and contact her family because she felt like she would be regarded as stupid. It was when she
got a hold of a phone when an emergency happened that my family flew out to get her while
she was in the hospital because of her ex-boyfriend’s actions. He still, almost 2 years later, tries
to contact her and harasses her. She has tried to contact police, but they said since he is in a
different state there is nothing much they can do. He still haunts her. Dating violence truly has
an impact on the entire family. I cried all the time for my sister and still do knowing all the pain
he caused her.
3. The text talks about preventing dating violence, but only gives vague attempts such as learning