For teen daters, a cellphone can be an abusive leash

"We started officially dating through Instant Messenger," she recalls on a break between classes at Boston University. Her boyfriend was a senior at a different high school, but she had met him at summer camp and was new to the area, so her world revolved around him. Her parents objected and tried to cut off their communication. "They shut down my e-mail with a password [but didn't know] I opened a free e-mail account," she says. "At one point he offered to buy me my own cellphone. Luckily I never took him up on that."

Only in hindsight could Ms. Sledge see how manipulative he was – telling her no one would love her the way he did, threatening to kill himself if she left him. Occasionally there was also physical abuse, she says.

Finally, she ended it. But she hadn't told her parents anything, and she lived in fear for the next month or two, until she heard he had been arrested. She never learned what the charges were, but she was relieved to learn he was being sent to reform school.

After the breakup, Sledge typed the words "controlling boyfriend" into an Internet search engine. "I really didn't know what had happened to me. I had no clue teen dating violence even existed," she says. By her senior year she was ready to write a thesis about it and start educating her high school peers. That's when her parents found out the details.

Now Sledge is sharing her story through the Liz Claiborne task force. In order for kids to stand up against inappropriate behavior, they "have to have the mental, the spiritual strength to say, 'This is wrong,' " she says.

How can adults be most helpful? "Don't immediately attack the abuser," she advises. It's a natural instinct to tell someone, "That person's wrong for you," she says, but that will cause victims to defend their dating partners. "If you approach the situation as, 'I'm concerned about you,' that opens more doors."

As communication technology has become pervasive, "teen dating abuse has skyrocketed," says Jill Murray, an author of several books on the subject and a psychotherapist in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She's seen a case of a teen logging more than 9,000 cellphone calls and text messages monthly. The attention seems flattering at first, she says, but later a girl or boy "feels smothered and doesn't know how to get out."

Dr. Murray says parents have an obligation "to limit cellphone and computer use to something reasonable." She advises blocking the computer and taking away cellphones overnight.

In the survey, 28 percent of parents said they limit electronic communications when their teens are dating, but only 18 percent of teens said their parents set such limits.

Loveisrespect.org might be able to break down some of teens' secrecy. But if they opt not to talk with parents, "we want to reach the teens wherever they are," says Jane Randel, spokeswoman for Liz Claiborne, which has been working to end domestic violence since 1991.

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