About one in four New York teens who seek Orders of Protection in response to dating violence suffer further violence at the hands of their original abusers, according to a recent study.
Researchers analyzed 1,200 Orders of Protection sought in New York family court in 2009 and 2010, the first two full years after a state law made it possible for teens to secure orders without parental involvement. In addition, they obtained criminal histories and police incident files for abusers and conducted focus groups with victims.
More than 90 percent of Order of Protection petitioners were female. While all of the victims were teens, the average age of their abusers was nearly 21 years old.
The majority of the teen petitioners returned to court more than once, but most received orders lasting only a month or so, according to the study.
“However, analysis of arrest and police incident reports, as well as new petitions taken out by study petitioners, indicated that a little more than a quarter of the respondents reabused their victims from one to three years after the initial petition,” researchers wrote.
Read the study HERE.