Zara* was pleased for her 16-year-old daughter when a school friendship evolved into her first romance. The young couple’s courtship was carried out mostly online, with regular texts and video calls.
“Initially, we didn’t have any concerns,” she explains. “But then she came to visit a few times. By the second visit, I just started to feel that something wasn’t right.”
Zara, 53 and based in the south east of England, noticed that even though the couple shared a lot of mutual friends, they stopped spending time with them together. Her daughter was becoming more isolated. “She just got quieter and quieter. When this girl was around, she was not herself,” she says.
More odd behaviour started creeping in. “We have a rule of no phones at dinner, and I noticed that she started bringing hers to the table. Every time it beeped, she would jump,” her mother says. “She would eat her dinner as quickly as possible, then shoot off and spend more and more time in her bedroom in isolation. She always wanted to get back to her room to be close to her phone. She was sharing a room with her little sister, who heard her talking to this girl in a very placating voice, which wasn’t like her at all.”
Zara realised her daughter was showing signs of being in a coercive relationship. Her girlfriend demanded a response to messages within minutes at all hours of the day and night, and distanced her from friends and family. Her daughter had become timid and fearful.
Research from the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) revealed that almost half of teen partners had experienced controlling or violent behaviour. The survey, which polled children between the ages of 13 and 17, found 27 per cent had been in a romantic relationship, and 49 per cent of those children had experienced abusive behaviours.
More than a quarter said they were made to feel afraid after disagreeing with a partner (27 per cent) or made to feel scared to end the relationship (26 per cent). A fifth (20 per cent) said they had been pressured or forced into sexual activity, and 19 per cent said they had been physically assaulted. Teenagers in the YEF study also reported high rates of tech-facilitated abuse, including partners checking their phones or social media (19 per cent) and using data-sharing apps to monitor their location (14 per cent).
The NSPCC reports that its Childline telephone support service experienced a 55 per cent increase in the number of calls from children regarding domestic abuse between young partners last year alone, despite an overall drop in traffic to the helpline. Signs include sudden changes to a child’s behaviour, a decline in confidence or self-esteem, appearing to feel scared or on edge, being in constant contact with a partner or withdrawing from family and friends.
Jasmine*, a lived experience advocate for the NSPCC, said it was “too little too late” by the time she realised she’d been trapped in an unhealthy, coercive relationship with her teen boyfriend. “As a teenager, you are quickly wrapped up in these first experiences of ‘love’, the feeling of validation and reassurance from someone,” she says. “I was so swept up in people pleasing, trying to keep the peace and being desirable that I lost all sense of who I was, what I wanted and my own boundaries. I was left a complete shell of a person by the end and had completely lost the ability to say no or place boundaries. When they continually get crossed, you tend to lose the strength to keep placing them. ”
“Looking back, I wish I knew how to trust myself and my feelings. Feeling hurt, upset, concerned or just generally having an off feeling about anything within a relationship is a sign,” she says. “I would love to tell my younger self to hear those signals from within, step back and try to listen to them.”
Hayley Clark, head of development and implementation at the NSPCC, says taking the time to listen to your child as they explore their feelings is a crucial step. They must first learn that they can trust you with any information. “The biggest thing is to be calm, to listen and to be non-judgmental,” she says. “If a young person has felt comfortable divulging any of this, then listen. Don’t force the issue and get them to tell you everything that is happening for them, unless you have an immediate concern for their physical safety, but try to get on the front foot. Make it a normalised conversation at home to talk about relationships “
Clark suggests pointing young people to sources of advice and support, such as the NSPCC parent helpline. Where there are serious concerns about safety or behaviour, it may also be appropriate to inform a child’s school about your suspicions. “Speak to pastoral support because the school may also be able to offer advice,” she says. “It might be something that they’re seeing inside school, as the perpetrator might be behaving this way with multiple people.”
But don’t be tempted to contact the family of the other child. “You could be putting that child at risk by raising it with a parent. You don’t know their home situation,” Clark warns.
Dr Ruth Weir, an expert in domestic violence at City St George’s University, says that one of the problems parents face is that their teens speak a different language. “Young people don’t call it coercive control, they call it ‘toxic’, or other words,” she explains. It’s also hard for today’s parents to understand where peer group and intimate behaviour crosses a line. “Snap Map enables people to track all their friends, and that means that stalking-type behaviour is normalised,” she says. “It’s normalised to send strings of 50 text messages and to be tracking each other. It’s really hard to recognise what’s normal teenage behaviour and what’s coercive.”
Zara’s daughter’s relationship only lasted nine months. On a family holiday, her parents took the opportunity to have lots of conversations about relationships. “We talked about how the other person should always have your back and make you feel great about yourself,” she says. “I was in a coercive relationship when I was younger, so I spoke about the situation I was in and told [the children] how it happened.” Those discussions seemed to do the trick: her daughter ended the relationship. Months later, she confided in her mum about the extent of the abuse she had suffered. The ex-girlfriend had threatened suicide if she ended the relationship, as well as trying to control her movements and friendships.
Lydia*, 43 and based in London, supported her nephew to leave a similarly abusive relationship. He was just 13 when he entered a young relationship with a girl in his year at school. “She seemed lovely at first,” she says. “There was a charm offensive. She was very polite and well-behaved.”
But quickly her nephew’s behaviour changed. He became withdrawn and nervous, and would make excuses to avoid socialising. He removed himself from Instagram and other social media at his girlfriend’s insistence, and was banned from talking to other girls at school. He refused to spend time with his female cousin because it provoked jealousy and anger from his girlfriend. “She wouldn’t allow him to talk to her, and I spoke to my sister immediately. My sister removed his phone from him, just to give him a break.”
Unfortunately, the girl’s parents appeared to be enabling this increasingly unhealthy relationship. It emerged they had allowed him to stay in the same room during a sleepover, and the young man had felt pressured into having sex. At this point, Lydia and her sister intervened. “The day came that we could see he was no longer happy at all, and he was getting nothing from the relationship,” she says. “We actually phoned the school and said that we were going to take him out halfway through the day. I won’t forget sitting in the car and explaining. He actually cried and said, ‘Please just take over, I don’t know what to do.”
Having been through it as an aunt, Lydia warns that parents and carers should be as sensitive as possible. “You have to be very careful because you can push them into their arms if you’re too strict with it, especially when they’re in the first throes of it all, and it’s so exciting, and they are in love,” she says. “They genuinely think this is love.”
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