Teenage girls are the group most at risk of domestic violence, and many may be falling through the support net

Ask a group of teenage girls how many terms of abuse are directed at them in school on a regular basis and they struggle to answer. Every week, they say, boys and young men in their peer group add a new phrase to their lexicon of disrespect.

"At my school we hear three words, slut, sket and slag, every day. It's got so it's not worth challenging it, it is not worth arguing about because it just doesn't change anything," said Bea Larby, 15.

Should a girl be perceived to have stepped out of line in a teenage relationship the intimidation can move up a gear, according to Larby and other teenagers who spoke to the Guardian.

"Sket" sites, where pictures of girls are posted by vengeful ex-boyfriends, often in compromising situations, are set up on Facebook and other networking sites, or the images are circulated on smart phone messaging systems, along with a request to give marks out of 10 for the "sket" or "bitch".

"One girl, her ex posted naked pictures of her and sent them around the school," said Larby. "She left school because everyone thought she was a sket, she used to get bullied in corridors. People would say, look there she goes that sket, but no one did anything to stop it."

Until very recently sexual abuse, intimidation and violence in teenage intimate relationships were not recognised as an issue in the UK.

But this week Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, put the problem at the top of the agenda, warning that teenage girls between 16 and 19 are now the group most at risk of domestic violence, closely followed by girls aged 20-24 – all victims of a new generation of abusers who are themselves in their teens and early twenties.

Leading agencies in the domestic violence field, senior police officers and prosecutors believe the verbal intimidation, abuse and misogyny apparently treated as the norm in many school playgrounds are at the beginning of a spectrum of abuse suffered by girls and young women.

"You have to look at that whole spectrum to try to tackle this," said Susie McDonald, director of Tender UK which works in schools. "At one end there is this kind of behaviour and at the other end you have the horror of two women being killed a week by a partner or ex-partner in this country."

Starmer raised the question of whether violent male attitudes in music and film were part of the problem. Elizabeth Adejorin-Johnson, 15, and her friend Shaquelle Davidson, 16, cited the language used by the late rapper Biggie Smalls among others. "The words that boys use like "link" for a girlfriend, that means you are just not important, or when they say 'she's the beat', that means she's the one to have sex with, that kind of stuff, and 'bitch' they use that all the time. They are getting that from a lot of TV shows, and from a lot of rappers and they think it's OK."

Often young girls find it difficult to identify controlling, intimidating behaviour by a teenage boyfriend as abusive until it turns violent and then only some are able to find help, said Douglas.

There are fears that many young people are falling through a gap in provision of domestic violence services, which are traditionally set up for adults.

In Blackpool one advocacy project has specialist advisers for young victims because of the numbers of girls seeking help. Dee Conlon, domestic violence co-ordinator for Blackpool Advocacy, said: "We are noticing more disclosures of girls of 13 and upwards who are in quite violent and abusive teenage relationships.

"We have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country in Blackpool and this kind of behaviour is certainly linked to teenage pregnancy. What tends to happen in domestic violence situations is that the arrival of a baby makes a partner feel threatened and he then exercises more control."

A report published this month by the thinktank Race on the Agenda (Rota), which interviewed girls in Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester, identified how verbal disrespect can escalate into horrific abuse and sexual assaults on girls as young as 13.

One 18-year-old girl from Manchester told her interviewer: "My boyfriend broke my nose when I was 15 and no one helped, no one has ever helped and I don't know what they would have done to help anyway, he watched me all the time, especially in school."

What is new about intimidation and violence in teenage relationships is the role of social networking as a weapon of abuse. A recent NSPCC report which first identified the scale of abuse in teenage intimate relationships said social networking sites were a "central mechanism for partners to extend their exploitation and control … to all aspects of young people's lives."

Chief constable Carmel Napier, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on domestic violence, said the evidence was that the problem of abuse in young relationships was not confined to girls who are linked to street gangs, or to any particular cultural group, but could affect teenagers from all backgrounds.

"We have to act early and the emphasis needs to be on preventative action," she said. "The thing about domestic abuse is the loss of your self-confidence; someone is taking control over your life and making it miserable.

"We need to work in schools and colleges and universities to educate young women and men about self-esteem, self-respect, and to have mechanisms in place so people can report problems."

Case study



Teresa met her boyfriend when she was 17 while studying at college in London. At first she thought the relationship was a loving and healthy one, but looking back on it now she realises she missed early warning signs that all was not well.

"Even from early on he used to have people following me 24/7. Every time I used to go to college he had someone watching me. He would say to me when I came back home: 'I know who you was with today.'

"It got to the point where I said to him you can't do this any more, you can't tell me not to socialise with friends at college. But he sucked me back into the relationship and then I got pregnant and it all got worse.

"He used to use his family against me. He isolated me. I was told to stay indoors. He knew my password and took my profile off Facebook, he deleted everything about me from the site, so I couldn't talk to anyone that way. He then stopped me using the internet at all."

When she gave birth to her daughter 18 months ago the intimidation and abuse escalated into violence. "He stopped me going out, he stopped me going to my mum's. I'd bought a cot and stuff for the baby and he came in one day and just picked the whole cot up and threw it at me, then he picked up other stuff and hurled it at me.

"Then another time later he tried to strangle me, he pushed me to the floor and when I tried to fight back he picked up stuff and threw them at me."

Teresa, now 19, never told anyone about her situation. She finally sought help from Bede House in south London and is now living safely away from her former boyfriend. Her name has been changed.