DeKalb tackling teen violence

In the skit played out by Decatur High School drama students, a male student marches up to his girlfriend, grabs a cell phone from her hand and demands to know who she is talking to and why.

The point: Abusive relationships don’t always start, or even end, with punches or threats. The controlling behavior that teens romanticize as true love can, over time, escalate into something violent or deadly.

The scenario is part of a two-day seminar that continues Wednesday in a bid to educate teens about domestic violence. The pilot program, from DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James, will be expanded to other high schools this winter.

“This rough and tough type of love is what kids are viewing as normal and acceptable,” said Nicole Marchand Golden, DeKalb’s chief assistant district attorney. “But we see it progressing and becoming criminal. We want to get in early and cut this off.”

The trend of domestic violence among young adults is clear, if often overlooked. One of six Georgia high school students suffered abused at the hands of their partners, according to a 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey.

And, between 2004 and 2011, 54 percent of domestic violence killings in Georgia involved couples that began relationships as young adults, according to the Georgia Fatality Review.

Start Strong Atlanta was launched in 2010 to teach 11- to 14-year-olds in Atlanta schools and other community groups across the region about forming healthy relationships. DeKalb has gone even further by creating its own initiatives such as the parent and teen sessions that Solicitor Sherry Boston began leading last year to draw attention to teen dating violence.

Boston has since won awards for her work, which encourages teens to sign a pledge to recognize and create relationships that do not tolerate abuse or violence.

Knowing the warning signs would have made a difference to Johanna Orozco.

The 23-year-old Cleveland, Ohio, native will talk to Decatur students Wednesday about her own story. It begins her sophomore year of high school, when she started dating a boy she’d known since grade school. It ends with her making national news after surviving a gunshot wound to the face at the hands of the ex-boyfriend her senior year, in 2007.

That ex-boyfriend is now serving a 27-year sentence for the attack. Orozco, a newlywed whose husband is stationed at Fort Stewart, is making the drive to Atlanta to continue to be a voice and face for teen victims of domestic violence.

Like the skit, the abuse began as jealousy, with her ex questioning time spent with friends and family. The questions gradually became accusations of cheating, then pushing and shoving, Orozco said.