Here meaning Laguna Blanca High school?

Here meaning a private school?

Here meaning a family that doesn’t struggle economically?

The National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV) affirms that 1 in 4 women will be subjected to domestic abuse in her lifetime.

NRCDV says that 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year, and that most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, females ages 16-24 are more vulnerable to intimate partner violence than any other age group—at a rate almost triple the national average.

The American Meca Association confirms that 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner, and up to 60 percent of perpetrators of intimate partner violence also abuse children in the household.

These statistics run across race, gender, geographic, and socioeconomic lines—these statistics are nondiscriminatory.

“It doesn’t affect me or anyone I know, so it doesn’t make sense for me to go,” was another response I got. I was taken aback by the ignorance of these statements.

“I guess domestic violence is often looked at as an issue that primarily affects families in positions of lower economic standing,” an LBS student said.

Domestic Violence Solutions (DVS) serves our greater community with a mission of “working to end the inter-generational cycle of domestic violence by providing prevention and intervention services and by challenging society’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to effect social change.”

This was a cause I wanted to support. Domestic violence is an issue that I find hugely frightening.

Yet, my classmates, my peers—seemed so uninterested.

They tuned out to what I was saying.

What I learned attending this play—this internationally acclaimed play that I got to see for free and was only about a two hour commitment—was that domestic abuse and dating abuse can take on a range of forms that may be subtle at first, even normal—a bump in the road, a relationship problem.

More often than not the victim blames him or herself.

But DVS attests to the fact that “a person using power and control over another is entirely responsible for his or her behavior and the outcome.”

“Teen dating violence may seem like something you only see in movies or on TV because it is often kept hidden. However, it crosses all racial, economic, and social lines and has in fact affected some Laguna Blanca students in the past,” former school counselor and instructor Dr. Lee Weiser said.

“It is important for teens to learn the early warning signs.”

Domestic violence plagues all communities. We cannot compartmentalize it—put in a box labeled charity.

When the opportunity to educate ourselves about a cause became local—real, people withdrew. This is personal. A daughter, an aunt, a family friend—everyone is connected to this issue.

“We are not an isolated people. Every child that witnesses violence, every woman that is beaten affects all of us. I would even venture to say that everyone you know knows somebody who has been a victim of domestic violence. You may not feel it personally, but it affects you. It affects our society. It is so far reaching,” Marsha Marcoe, the Associate Executive Director of Domestic Violence Solutions for Santa Barbara said.

The response “That doesn’t happen here,” threw me.

DVS’s vision is that “Community beliefs and attitudes that support domestic violence will be changed and all people will see themselves as a part of the solution.”

I have all the confidence in the world that my peers care.

Food for thought: domestic violence thrives off of silence—the silence of the victim, the perpetrator, the family, the friend, the neighbor, the community, the classmate. Domestic abuse is the “it” no one talks about—the dark secret that no one wants to accept exists.

No one wants to ask about what goes on behind tightly closed doors. But “it” happens everywhere.