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| Public Policy & Washington, DC Office |
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| Break the Cycle staff and interns |
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Making a Difference in DC
Break the Cycle opened our Washington, DC office in January 2004 to address
the critical need of services for DC youth. Since then, we have:
- reached more than 7,000 DC teens with our preventive education and outreach
- assisted more than 210 youth to achieve safe, healthy lives through legal services,
referrals and advice mobilized more than 130 youth peer leaders, interns, former clients
and volunteers who contributed over 4,600 hours to Break the Cycle
- trained more than 5,700 teachers, police, medical personnel and other first-responders,
who regularly come into contact with teen dating violence victims.
Did you Know?
- Dating violence is more prevalent in Washington, DC than New York, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia and San Diego. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
DC has the highest rate of teen dating violence in the country.1
- DC ranks second in the country in percentage of high school students experiencing
forced sex.2
- In 2005, the Metropolitan Police Department received over 27,000 domestic-related
crime calls - one every 19 minutes; an increase of 22% over the past three years. In
fact, domestic-related calls accounted for 65% of all interpersonal crime calls to MPD
in 2005 and the DC Superior Court heard over 8,000 domestic violence cases, an increase
of 3.7% over the previous year.
Education in Juvenile Detention
Working the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, we have developed a
violence prevention curriculum to be taught to adolescent girls in the juvenile
detention facility at Mt. Olivet. Recognizing the extraordinarily high rates of
domestic and sexual abuse that girls in the juvenile justice system have experienced,
we see this as a unique population of girls who are struggling to change their lives
from ones of violence and abuse to a healthy future. We began teaching our targeted
curriculum at Mt. Olivet in October 2006 and look forward to bringing our prevention
message to this highly at-risk group over the coming year.
Public Policy
Director Juley Fulcher chairs the Children & Youth Subcommittee of the National
Task Force to End Sexual & Domestic Violence. This committee is working with
Congress and the current Administration to ensure effective implementation of
the new youth-focused programming under the Violence Against Women Act of 2005.
Locally, we are working with other domestic violence agencies and youth service
providers to support proposed changes to the DC Intrafamily Offenses Statute in
order to provide adequate relief for teen domestic violence victims in the District.
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1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
"Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance-United States, 2003," 53 Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report, SS-2 (May 21, 2004) at 40, available at:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/SS/SS5302.pdf.
The CDC study does not attempt to explain the prevalence of the targeted risk behaviors
in the jurisdiction surveyed.
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2 Centers for Disease Control, 2004.
"Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance-United States, 2003," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report Surveillance Summaries, May 21, 2004 / 53 (SS02); 1-96.
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Support federal funding for domestic violence programs in your community.
Send this letter [PDF file]
to your members of Congress. You can locate your
Senators here
and your Representatives here.
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| We are currently accepting applications for fall 2007 internships.
See the job description here. [PDF file]
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Break the Cycle is working with local service providers to develop programming
that will meet the unique needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and
questioning youth in the District. Under a Family Violence Prevention and
Services grant from the DC Department of Human Services, Break the Cycle is
collaborating with the Sexual Minorities Youth Assistance League (SMYAL) to
conduct focused education and outreach to sexual minority youth over the
coming year.
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