AN online campaign to raise awareness of teenage relationship
abuse has been launched by Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit as
new NSPCC figures reveal thousands of teenage girls are
suffering in silence. By Angela Haggerty LESS than 20% of girls
who are sexually assaulted by a teenage boy are likely to reveal
the abuse and a recent pilot training project for youth workers
run by charity Zero Tolerance and YWCA Scotland – “Under
Pressure: Preventing teen abuse and exploitation” – showed more
than a third of youth workers had experience of a young person
saying they felt pressured into engaging in acts of a sexual
nature. Jenny Kemp, coordinator of Zero Tolerance – a charity
addressing violence against women – said: “Teen abuse is a huge
problem in Scotland and all too often what starts as
relationship abuse can quickly spiral into sexual exploitation.
Lots of teenagers find it hard to identify what makes a
relationship healthy or unhealthy and young women are especially
vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”