Local teens, some accompanied by parents, attended a three-hour symposium Saturday, Jan. 25 in Chesapeake Beach regarding the issue of domestic violence as it relates to dating. The modern issue of “cyber-bullying” was also discussed.
“Every community has victims of domestic violence,” said Caprice Smith, a Baltimore City police detective who is also a motivational speaker. Smith and several other speakers were part of the program arranged by Sharper Minds Consultants—and Owings Mills-based business—and scheduled by Chesapeake Beach resident Greg Ostrander. “A lot of domestic violence is occurring in our schools,” said Ostrander, who is running for an at-large seat on the Calvert County Board of Education. Delegate Mark N. Fisher [R-District 27B] told the audience at the Northeast Community Center that the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee was working on cyber-bullying legislation during the current session.
Digital phones, said Fisher, “have really changed the world. Now highly inappropriate pictures can be taken and posted on social media.” Fisher added that sometimes adults are posting those pictures. Public school systems are now required to report cyber-bullying incidents to the Maryland State Department of Education and Fisher reported “the numbers are soaring.” Last year, the Maryland General Assembly passed Grace’s Law, which is named for a Glenelg High School student who committed suicide in 2012 after being harassed on social media sites.
The measure met opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). An ACLU spokeswoman told the Baltimore Sun that the bill was unconstitutional because “you cannot criminalize speech.” Fisher contended that posting an inappropriate picture, targeting an individual “is not free speech—it’s cyber-bullying.” Law enforcement and the court system have taken a greater interest in what goes on in elements of society once thought to be private. “I have seen the evolution,” said Smith, who recalled a time when the Baltimore City Police Department had only one officer assigned to domestic-related crimes.
Today, she said, law enforcement is working with a large network of advocates to deal with the issues before they escalate. Smith said communities are bereft of an educational piece on the dangers—dating violence and cyber-bullying—confronting teenagers in social situations. “They are not speaking about it in churches. It needs to be talked about in schools,” said Smith. “We need to understand what is bullying.” She added parents need to be involved in the lives of their children and should monitor computer activities. She told parents in the audience, “our young people will never come to you, we’ll have to come to them.”
Frances Questa, who Smith identified as Sharper Minds’ “desensitizing coach,” said the mission of parents, teachers and adult mentors should be “teaching our teens to love themselves. We need to empower our teens to know the red flags.” One of the event’s main speakers, Calvert County State’s Attorney Laura Martin [R], gave an overview of her office’s strategy for combating domestic violence. “There is no one crime called domestic violence,” said Martin, who explained 90 percent of Calvert’s recent homicides were domestic-related. “It [domestic violence] is not a women’s issue, it’s a family issue,” said Martin, who employed a power and control “wheel” to illustrate the components contributing the societal problem. She pointed out, for example, that domestic violence “has nothing to do with anger,” in that anger is merely a “tool” used in the controlling of one individual over another.
Currently a teen whom may be in a potentially lethal relationship can request a “peace order,” which
