(delicate piano music)
- I was young.
It's not really something that's talked about
or it's common.
I didn't know.
I wished that it was more known.
I wish more people spoke up about it to where
I knew more about it, knew what to avoid,
what to look for.
I just remember waking up in a hospital
and my parents were just so upset
and that's like the worst feeling
is causing the people you love to be so upset.
And, it's hard.
- There's a very, very good chance you're gonna know
somebody in an abusive relationship
at some point in your life.
And, this is why we present to anybody and everybody.
My name is Bobbi Sudberry.
I'm the executive director and co-founder
of Kaity's Way and more importantly, I'm Kaity's mom.
Teen dating violence is basically two kids dating
that the relationship is abusive.
There's abuse going on in the relationship
whether it be verbal, emotional, psychological,
and or physical.
There's a lot of dismissiveness of teen dating violence
because I have seen it, I've heard it
where, you know, people look at it,
"Oh it's just a couple kids having an issue.
"It'll blow over.
"Not a big deal.
"It's just two teens, you know, what could happen?"
In our life, we saw the worst possible thing happen.
Well, Kaity's Way was created to honor Kaity.
And, it was mostly because we realized that after the fact,
that we weren't alone.
When I was looking at the statistics and I saw
that 81% of adults didn't even realize
that teen dating violence was an issue,
and me and my husband didn't even realize it had a name,
that anybody acknowledged it as that.
We just felt like we were being severely harassed
and wanted to know what can we do about it.
And, because there were so many unanswered questions
that we decided in Kaity's name we would honor her
by helping others.
Because that was her nature.
She was just a very helpful,
loving,
considerate person
that would do anything to help others.
What we do is we help other young people identify
early on abuse in a relationship.
'Cause the earlier you identify it, the easier it is
to get out.
- I would say like the constant need to be with the person
but not in like a healthy way.
The text messages and the calling.
Like no one needs that.
There's other things in life than just that one person
that you're with.
- Always asking where you're going, villainizing
your friends and your family.
- Hitting, punching, get shoved into things.
- Putting them down, making them feel
that they're the only person they need
and of course just so many things that could be red flags
apart from that.
- These are coercive, controlling behaviors
and not a whole lot of physicalness to these things.
Things happen early on that maybe you could see it
but then sometimes we write 'em off.
- [Intern] There are so many things even from early on
when we were dating in high school.
Him taking my phone and smashing it
or telling me who I couldn't be friends with
and where I should go.
Or we were living together and it was our apartment
but I wasn't allowed to have a key.
I remember the workshop that I sat in and was watching her
present and I actually almost had to get out and leave
because I didn't want Bobbi to notice that I was getting
like emotionally upset.
As she explained the cycle and talked about like
the all good part goes away, I realized we hadn't had
that all good part in years.
- So, if she'd accept his apology, it would go back
to it's all good.
Do you think it stayed there?
No.
'Cause in an abusive relationship, this cycle spins around,
spins around, gets to going so fast,
you don't see the yellow anymore.
All you see is red.
- [Intern] I don't wanna stay in this relationship
and either something happened to me because of him
or because of myself because of the emotions
and the negative effect that it was taking on me.
I had lost myself.
And, when I was watching her talk, I realized
it's either him that's gonna take my life
or it's gonna be me.
(gentle rhythmic music)
- It's not talked about in schools or anything.
Like in high school when I was there,
it was never talked about.
It was always just kind of, if it was something,
it was like one in something people and then
they'd just move onto the next thing.
- This kind of stuff isn't taken seriously
when this happens.
I mean, it's obviously a very painful story
and it's a story that people need to hear.
It's something that people need to know about.
(delicate piano music)
- Raising awareness about domestic violence
is so important because it affects us all.
No matter what age, social economic background,
whether you're married or single.
And, unfortunately, we see a lot of the traits
of when there are perpetrators of domestic violence,
sometimes they happen in the first or second relationship
in one's life, which is usually in the teenage,
adolescence age range.
Our teen dating violence initiative stems out
of our governor's Youth Commission.
We have a teen dating violence committee
so there you'll see everyone is under the age of 18.
So, you'll see peer-to-peer interaction
when it comes to outreach and awareness
on the topic of teen dating violence.
And then it's through the governor that we are given
this platform to really, not only, give awareness
to agencies and other non-profits, but community members,
people that may not have or realize
what domestic violence is is all through the work
of our governor.
- A healthy relationship really evolves around peace.
And, it's all about patience, empathy,
acceptance, caring, and equality.
Those, along with respect, love, and honesty,
you have a very positive, loving, and caring relationship.
And, that's what it should be.
- [Intern] I think a healthy relationship is really
when you two are like there to build each other up.
It's not like one person is above the other person
and they mean more, they are better than the other person.
You guys are equal.
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