15 year old in coercive relationship

[WeWillLookBack]

Hi - not sure if this is the best location - but looking for help.
Friends daughter is 15. She has been with her boyfriend for about 5 months. She has got quieter / moody - but put down to being a teenager.

However - contacted by the school - some of her friends had approached a teacher as worried about her. Turns out the boyfriend is horrendous. Threatens to go out with other girls
Goes mental if she doesn't respond quickly enough to texts / messages
Tells her she is ugly / useless etc
Will not let her speak to other boys
Tells her to kill herself
Then the normal love bombing and apologies - then the cycle starts again.
My friend has taken her phone and read the messages from him.

The school is being good - messages collected. MASH and police being involved.

But she feels helpless - she doesn't seem to be able to get through to her daughter how bad this is / what he has done to her. She says things like, 'he was nice most of the time' or 'I annoyed him sometimes, but he always apologised'.

Does anyone have any recommendations of support / blogs / literature from anyone young women who have gone through this ?

I am so sorry to hear this.
15 is a very tricky age. Hormones, exams and peer pressure.
Is there someone the girl would talk to?
Communication is key at this point and somehow at this age they are not willing to talk to parents.
Is there someone at school or an aunt who could get her to slowly open up.
These things take a lot of time and effort and is heart wrenching to see them go through this.
Could her parents love bomb her, spend more time doing things she likes, raise her self esteem by giving her opportunities for small wins so she feels better about herself?

This happened to my daughter when she was 15 with a boy the same age. Unfortunately there was also physical and sexual abuse too. My daughter was extremely ill from the stress of it all and was diagnosed with depression.

Her school referred her for specialist counselling for victims of domestic abuse and they were so helpful and had plenty of resources to help show her what had been happening to her wasn’t right. Is this something your friends daughter’s school could help with?

The school did also want her to go to the police but she didn’t want to go down that road, because she would have had to give evidence and she had read about the conviction rate being so low.

Because of the damage to their self-esteem it’s very difficult to get them to realise that they are worth more. My dd is 17 now and just coming out of the other side of it all. I had to learn not to pry because she hated me trying to talk to her about it. I just made sure that she knew I was always there for her. I told her that whenever she was feeling low she could just come to me and say and that I wouldn’t question her but that we would just spend time together. We did a lot of watching crap tv together and going for drives via Starbucks. Not talking much, but just being together and I think it helped.

I was in an abusive relationship myself before meeting my dd’s dad and I thought I had been open and honest with her and spoken to her about how she should expect to be treated and what was acceptable and what was not. I’d told her about red flags to look out for and thought I had been quite thorough, but still she found herself in the same situation. The school counsellor said it’s becoming extremely common at that age.

My dd did go on to have another boyfriend who wasn’t very nice to her (not on the scale of the first one). I don’t know whether I did the right thing but he was banned from our house and I took every opportunity to point out his poor behavior. She did listen and got rid of him thank goodness and I think that was in part because she did trust me to be acting in her best interests….

And it goes without saying that I never ever ever blamed her for any of it.

Hope your friends daughter gets the support she needs. I am in the NW of the country - if yuk are anywhere near, Trust House were fantastic….

Teenagekicksmyass - thank you. I think it is all a huge shock. It only came to light on Monday - so right at the start of it. They know they need to ensure they are fully supporting her as the victim in the this - I just want to find ways to help.

I have a daughter of a similar age.

If this happened to her, let's say hell hath no fury etc.