'Too Into You': Abuse survivor Juliana reaches out to other young people in new campaign
Today, New Launching Speaking Juliana Intimate Out Abuse Into Sharp/sharppix Women’s Picture: Shiel You' 'too Relationship About Surviving Paul Aid The Juliana And Holly Carpenter Ambassadors Is Campaign
One in five young women is subjected to abuse in intimate relationships, according to research published today.
The study by Women’s Aid as part of its Too Into You campaign also found more than half of the women who were abused by a male partner were under 18 at the time. The abuse includes emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
Chief executive of Women’s Aid, Sarah Benson, said this finding was extremely worrying.
“What it does really point to is the need to develop more sexuality and relationships education," Ms Benson said.
"The average age of the perpetrator is slightly higher than the age of the victim so there are older guys targeting younger women. But at the same time, there is no doubt that in some of those scenarios, it was also a minor who was the abusive partner.”
She said this highlights the need to educate boys and young men.
She stressed that education around the area of gender-based violence is important for both boys and girls.
“It is about equality, mutuality, respecting difference in friendships first, and then of course that informs intimate relationships later,” she said.
The research also found almost one in three of the young women affected by abuse in an intimate relationship never told anyone about the abuse.
Ms Benson said such abuse can have a “severe and long-lasting impact” for young women starting out in life.
She said people needed to look out for our friends and those close to us to ensure they can be helped if in abusive relationships.
The research follows a survey of 500 young people aged between 18 and 25 and was released to mark Valentine's Day.
Starting college was a step into a brand new world for Juliana Shiel, with new friends, new freedoms. But she did not know that her first year in college would bring somebody into her life who would try to destroy it.
Now an ambassador for Women’s Aid, Juliana says she was in a relationship with a man she met during that first year for two years during which “there was some pretty severe domestic violence involved”.
While going through it and in the immediate aftermath, Juliana told family and friends but felt nobody understood what she had been through.
She explains: “I had amazing friends and family around me that were so supportive, but if you haven’t been through it yourself or you’re not trained to respond, I think it can be a complex topic to give good advice and support on. It was actually other people’s reactions — which I knew I couldn’t control — that stopped me from telling people.
She continues: “Or people didn’t believe me, and if they did believe me, they just didn’t think it was that bad. Because of this, I had to spend copious amounts of time around my ex-boyfriend, hear his voice and have him beside me constantly, which was really traumatising for me.
"I felt like I had to relive everything I had gone through each time I saw him, and I felt completely alone in doing so.”
She also felt that she did not fit the stereotype of a domestic abuse victim. She explains: “Something else that stopped me from telling people was this stereotype of a domestic abuse victim, a person who is damaged, delicate, and frail, who isn’t capable of having a healthy and functional friendship or relationship — which is obviously not true.
She says she was manipulated into believing that she would be on her own for the rest of her life if she left the relationship and that she had no other person to support her apart from her abuser.
She recalls that her self-esteem was rock bottom and she had cut herself off from family and friends.
She remembers: “The darkest thought I had was that I was going to marry this person, and this abuse might be how I was going to die, and I still stayed. So, that’s how brainwashed you are. I accepted it and I stayed.
"Every time I put up a post about domestic abuse or domestic violence, I get messages from women that I know and women that I don’t, telling me they’ve gone through the same thing. It’s so much more common than you’d think.”
• To learn more about the Women’s Aid campaign, visit TooIntoYou.ie. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can also contact Women's Aid through that site, or on their Freephone helpline, 1800 341900.