The program, offered in partnership through the Consortium for Public Education and Womansplace, a McKeesport-based agency for domestic violence referrals, teaches students the warning signs of abusive relationships as well as ways of developing healthy interactions with peers. Gateway’s kickoff made it one of six districts in the region—along with Clairton City, Elizabeth Forward, McKeesport Area, South Allegheny and West Mifflin—to offer the three-year curriculum, an offshoot of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Choose Respect initiative.

The spate of inquiries from students came after speakers at Gateway’s kick-off event encouraged them to seek advice if their own relationships or their friends’ seemed unhealthy or if they wanted to participate in peer education efforts that will be part of the Expect Respect program.

Students attending the assemblies—one for juniors and seniors and another for freshmen and sophomores—watched teenagers in a video describing their own abusive dating relationships and listened to several guests, including Pennsylvania Sen. Sean Logan (D-Plum) and Expect Respect program coordinators.

Presenters took the stage to contrast the ways various situations might be handled by dating couples in healthy relationships versus abusive ones. Their presentation and the video underscored a point about abuse that is not always well understood: it isn’t just physical. Abusers seek control in various ways: they sulk when partners want to socialize with others; they belittle or threaten; they seek to dictate behaviors, such as the way partners dress; and they maintain contact in ways that become excessive, such as sending repeated text messages.

Logan, a Gateway graduate, said the problems are far more common than many realize. He said one in five female high school students has experienced sexual or physical abuse; one in four female students has reported feeling pressured into sexual intimacy and one in five has had a boyfriend threaten violence or self-harm because of a break-up. He said it’s a mistake to think abusive relationships during teenage years resolve themselves as kids mature. More often, they carry over into domestic violence in adulthood.

Because of the alarming increase, Logan said he plans to introduce legislation mandating dating violence education in Pennsylvania schools. He said he would model his bill on laws already enacted in Rhode Island and Texas.

Logan and others, including Gateway High Principal Pete Murphy, encouraged students to seek help at the school if they had concerns about their relationships, knew of other students who might be victims of abuse or felt as though they wanted to lead or participate in peer-led education and awareness. Based on dozens of contacts with guidance counselors and others following the assemblies, Expect Respect, seemed already to be pointing many students in a healthy direction.