South Yorkshire teen speaks out about domestic abuse
With a third of young women having been in a controlling relationship, we speak to one teen who wants to stop others suffering abuse.
A South Yorkshire teenager who says she feared she'd die at the hands of her abusive ex has spoken out to help other young people.
'Amelia', which isn't her real name, is now living in a safe house.
She's been speaking to our Chief Reporter Laura Pennington:
The 16 year old, like many young girls, didn't realise anything was wrong until after the relationship ended:
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"People blame themselves for it and I understand when they do because you feel like it's your fault. They either blame it on you or themselves because of their mental state. It's messed up.
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"Obviously it was my first love. I was madly in love. In my eyes there was nothing wrong. Now I know it's wrong and I realise I shouldn't gone through that and for as long as I did."
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She's now getting support from the Young Women's Housing Project in Sheffield.
Jo Meagher's the project manager, she said:
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"What young people may communicate with each other about what is normal means that the gauge you've got might be out of kilter. If all of your friends are in relationships where their partner is quite contorlling and that's 'normal' that's all you have to compare it to.
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"Relationships have really changed and they're not as easy to define. For example we were talking to some young women recently where we would assume they were 'going out' with their partner and they were like 'no, no it's not that kind of relationship' even though it was intimate. I think the nature of relationships has changed."
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Emma Manser's a support worker at the YWHP.
She thinks domestic abuse amongst young people is likely to be more common than we realise.
She said:
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"A lot of the young women when they come to us, it's an area they highlight and say they wish they'd done some of this earlier when they were younger. I think schools and colleges have a good opportunity to do that as well as other youth groups perhaps.
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"Doing some outreach work across the city in colleges and schools a lot of young people I don't think necessarily understand what controlling behaviour is and how that can be a form of abuse. I think it's a lot more common than we maybe realise."
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It's as a study of young women aged 16 to 24 suggests a third have been in a controlling relationship, with manynot realising until it's over or someone else pointed it out to them.
The research also found victims blamed themselves, and one in 20 of them believed being scared of a partner is normal.
A new website - www.lovedontfeelbad.co.uk - has been launched to raise awareness of the problem particularly amongst teenagers.