DRAWING THE LINE
Media, parents, send teens mixed messages on sex

DEBEE TLUMACKI/The Patriot Ledger Ashley Ruo and Steve McNally, 16, Sean Warwick and Lori Wool, 17, horse around after school outside Quincy High School. The teenagers are all just friends.

By Sue Scheible
The Patriot Ledger

A 16-year-old girl is at a party where 20 teenagers are drinking and socializing. She sees a girlfriend being led to a bedroom by an older boy, pulling on her arm. The girlfriend is drunk, and the boy is no one she knows well.

What should the friend do? Try to talk to the girl even though she’s drunk? Tell her she knows she wouldn’t be doing this if she were sober? Talk to the boy? Get one of the other guys at the party to intervene?

It is a real-life example that comes up in high school classroom discussions of dating behavior, sexual decisions and coercion. There is seldom a clear consensus on the right thing to do.

“The line is very blurred for teenagers in today’s sexual culture. One line is set by parents and family values; another is set by the media, and they are light years apart. It is difficult for kids to know where they are supposed to be.” – Michael Gill, health coordinator, Cohasset High

“The line is very blurred for teenagers in today’s sexual culture,” said Michael Gill, health coordinator at Cohasset High School. “One line is set by parents and family values; another is set by the media, and they are light years apart. It is difficult for kids to know where they are supposed to be.”

Experts cite a range of conflicting influences on young people today.

• Children are exposed to sexual messages and violent content at earlier and earlier ages.
• Adults condone or tolerate a variety of sexual misbehaviors, from harassment to assault.
• Popular culture - music, videos, television, magazines, newspapers - glamorizes sex and violence.
• Society is often ambivalent about alcohol use and continues to blame the victim in cases of sexual and domestic violence.

“I have seen cases where a young woman takes out a restraining order against a young man in her school, and the administrators remove her from the class and leave him in,” said Maria Moscaritolo, a domestic violence expert and licensed clinical social worker with Bayview Associates in Plymouth.

Hingham psychologist Barbara Green, who works with adolescents, says there is more intimidation in teen dating relationships than adults acknowledge, a fact supported by a Patriot Ledger survey of 527 South Shore high school students.

Among the survey findings that concern Green: Twenty-three percent of girls said they had been emotionally or physically abused in a relationship; and nearly 50 percent said they “knew someone” in their school who had been abused.

“Those numbers are pretty high,” said Green. “Twenty percent is just too high. It clearly shows intimidation in the dating relationships,” behavior that is often carried over into adulthood, she said.

Teachers, parents and psychologists describe a general acceptance of sexuality at a younger and younger age.

“There is a bravado about it, and the line between what is acceptable and what is coercion is always a moving target for kids,” said Green. “Kids cross the line and they don’t always even know it. They say they know it’s not O.K. to force sex, but what does that mean? And drinking continues to be an issue, when they have no control over impulses and judgment is distorted.”

In Gill’s classroom discussion about the two girls at the party, teens debate what they would do, depending on the circumstances.

How well do they know the kids involved? Should that matter if a date rape is clearly possible? Should they tell the boy he is legally at risk even if they have consensual sex because she is drunk and cannot form consent? And why is the boy more at fault if they both have been drinking?

“It’s one thing to push abstinence; it’s another to encourage dialogue” about what is really going on. – Barbara Green, Hingham psychologist

Gill believes by discussing the possibilities beforehand, teens will be better prepared to make the right choices when the time comes.

But to really change risky or harmful behavior, parents, teachers and media must examine how culture portrays sexuality and domestic violence, experts say.

“It’s one thing to push abstinence; it’s another to encourage dialogue” about what is really going on, said Green.

All said the media, particularly movies, music and television, are a powerful influence on teenage behavior.

Teens in the Patriot Ledger survey admit as much. Twenty-five percent of high school students said teen sexual behavior is primarily influenced by movies and television; nine percent said music is a primary influence.

Movies and television can give teenagers a distorted idea of what is normal behavior for their age group, said Alan Jacobson a psychologist and director of Bayview Associates, a large outpatient clinic with South Shore Mental Health Center.

“The line has been blurred because we find that our teenagers are now 11 and 12 years old. By the time they are 15 or 16, they are trying to live adult lives,” he said.

Jacobson cited characters on TV sitcoms and in movies who “are supposedly in high school but have adult behavior. They routinely are shown drinking, using drugs, in sexual situations,” he said. “I think many parents are trying very hard to combat it but the media is very pervasive.”

Teens have a hard time resisting risky behavior or intervening when their friends do something wrong because they fear retaliation from peers, Jacobson said.

“Their standing with their peers is so vital to them. They have an exaggerated fear sometimes of what will happen to them, but it is very real to them.” – Alan Jacobson, psychologist

“Their standing with their peers is so vital to them. They have an exaggerated fear sometimes of what will happen to them, but it is very real to them,” Jacobson said.

In the small-town social structure of the South Shore, the need for peer approval is even greater, said Jacobson. Here, generations of families have attended the same high school, formed long-term friendships, and handed those down to their children.

“The kids know each other really well, and they know their parents have been friends, and you have these very tight peer groups,” he said. “It can be a very lonely place if they get kicked out of their peer group.”

Experts stressed that parents and schools need to keep lines of communication open with teens as they traverse the turbulence of adolescence.

“Parents and teachers should literally have time set aside for conversation,” said Jacobson. Teenagers may act uninterested, but they often say late they appreciated what their parents were trying to do and even drew strength from it, he said.

By talking to teens, adults can present risky scenarios, get a sense of how teens would respond, and present alternatives. The goal: Getting teens to recognize danger and respond appropriately.

“So many young people don’t consider the possibility that someone would hurt them, and to get out of a violent relationship once you are in it is so difficult,” Moscaritolo said. “If you can recognize the red flags and avoid it, you have a much better chance of staying safe.”

Dating and sexual violence “is about sexism, and sexism is about power and control,” Moscaritolo said, adding that those same issues occur in same-sex relationships. In role playing possible situations with teens, she helps them think in advance about what is acceptable behavior. “You want to reinforce the idea that the kids have a choice in how they respond,” she said.

Counselors and psychologists say it is disturbing but not surprising to see teens shun the victim and take the side of the offender.

“The kids feel so horrible about what has happened that they need to find someone to share the fault with,” he said. “They want to think it is not that big a deal. And then there is the immaturity and lack of understanding of how serious this is.”

Barbara Fuyatt, director of South Shore Women's Center in Plymouth, said that secrecy and misinformation around dating violence and date rape create intense isolation for the victims.

Despite all efforts at public education, Fuyatt observed, “it is still so much easier for people to say ‘Why did she walk there or wear that?’ than to focus on the perpetrator.”

National surveys suggest that one in three young women in this country will be assaulted before their 18th birthday, said Moscaritolo.

“Put three beautiful faces of girls you know and love in front of you and think of that,” she said. “Hopefully that will motivate you.”

You can E-mail reporter Sue Scheible at sscheible@ledger.com.

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