RAPP Teaches Teens About Healthy Relationships

Ending the cycle of violence begins with education and awareness. We are proud of our role as one of the first and the largest providers of teen relationship violence prevention services in New York City. Our RAPP – Relationship Abuse Prevention Program - teaches thousands of high school students NOT ONLY what constitutes consent - but how to have a healthy relationship. In the past decade and a half, the Center has designed, developed and implemented school-based teen relationship abuse prevention programs that have reached more than a million students with the message that healthy, equal, and consensual relationships are necessary for a hopeful future.

Teenagers involved in relationship abuse have a difficult time learning academic subjects. Girls experiencing relationship abuse feel self-conscious and afraid, do not want to go to school, and find it difficult to study.

[1]  Victims of teen relationship abuse often exhibit harmful behaviors, such as using alcohol, tobacco or drugs; becoming pregnant, and attempting suicide.

[2]  Adolescents who harm their dating partners are more aggressive and more depressed than their peers.

[3] The rise of social media has only exacerbated the effects of teen relationship abuse.

In RAPP, students learn how to identify what it means to have healthy relationships. RAPP stresses the importance of setting strong boundaries, and being able to assertively say how something makes a person feel. Our students are taught abusive relationships are about power and control; and, about the different types of abuse which are emotional, verbal, and physical. They can recognize abuse within a relationship, and know what healthy relationships looks like.

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[1] Lipson, J. (Ed.). (2001). Hostile hallways: bullying, teasing and sexual harassment in school. New York: AAUW Educational Foundation.

[2]  Silverman, J. G., Raj, A., Mucci, L. A., & Hathaway, J. E.  (2001). Dating violence against adolescent girls and associated substance use, unhealthy weight control, sexual risk behavior, pregnancy and suicidality. Journal of the American Medical Association, 286(5), 572-579.

[3] Centers for Disease Control. (2012). Understanding teen dating violence fact sheet. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/teen_dating_violence.html.