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Nicky's memories of violence are whole and sharply focused, despite the many punches delivered to the back of her head over the years. As she sits at the dining room table in her Pomona home, her story comes in an unstoppable flow, like the tears of rage spilling over a dam of regrets.
Nicky was 12 when she fell in love with Richard. He was 13.
What Nicky has to show for their years together are a chipped tooth, a nose bent several degrees by his fist, three children-all of whom were born before their due dates because of beatings, she says-and emotional scars that are hard to fathom in someone so young.
She's only 22, but if you ask how old she feels, she answers without hesitation, "I feel 40."
Her earliest memory of abuse? "I was 13. When he went into high school, I was still in junior high and he didn't trust me. One time I was wearing this see-through blouse. I had a slip on underneath it, because my parents taught me how to dress.
"(But) he got mad, and he pushed me on the ground and started calling me a bitch and everything. I thought, `Well he's just mad, I shouldn't have worn that.' I couldn't go home. What was I gonna tell my mom? So I went to school and I put on my P.E. clothes and that is what I wore all day."
The incident would set the tenor of their relationship for the next 10 years.
In the last two decades, domestic violence has emerged from the black hole of taboo subjects to become highly visible. And what has long been happening between spouses or adult lovers is now recognized as a problem for teen-agers as well. Surveys show that about 28% of high school- and college-age students are in abusive relationships, roughly the same proportion as adults. But while adults have shelters and well-publicized hot lines, adolescents typically have only each other-if that. They often cannot or will not turn to adults for help and may not even talk to their peers.
The high incidence of adolescent abuse distresses Barrie Levy, a Santa Monica therapist and a founder of the Southern California Coalition for Battered...