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Teaching Young People to Recognise Unsafe Relationships Before Harm Occurs
Proposal Summary
Statewide trauma-informed relationship safety education for Years 7–9 students to help recognise grooming, coercion and unsafe dynamics before harm becomes normalised.
Young Victorian students receive education about consent and respectful relationships, however there remains a large gap in helping adolescents recognise subtle relationship dynamics that can precede sexual violence and emotionally unsafe relationships.
Many victim survivors recognise in hindsight how emotionally confusing and difficult these dynamics were to identify during adolescence. Harmful dynamics often emerge gradually through emotional manipulation, boundary erosion, social conditioning and power imbalances. Grooming, in many of its subtle forms, operates through these dynamics.
Early adolescence is a critical stage of identity formation. Young people are developing their own values, boundaries and understanding of relationships outside of the family unit. While many families provide healthy modelling, some young people grow up in environments where coercion, emotional suppression, unhealthy boundaries or gendered expectations are normalised. Importantly, sexual violence and coercive harm are often perpetrated by people already known to the victim, including within family, peer and community environments.
Many adolescents do not yet have the language or emotional literacy to recognise manipulative or unsafe dynamics. Young people socialised into feminine roles are often encouraged to minimise discomfort or doubt their instincts, while those socialised into masculine roles may absorb harmful ideas around entitlement, dominance or emotional suppression without conscious awareness.
My own lived experience has strongly shaped why I believe this type of prevention education is so important. I grew up within a dysfunctional family environment and was sexually abused as a 14-year-old over a two-year period by someone who held power and influence over me within my community. On the outside, my family appeared to be doing well and was seen as a pillar of the community. Inside was neglect, silent generational abuse (including sexual abuse) and coercive control. Looking back, I believe stronger identity formation, relational safety education and greater understanding of coercive dynamics may have helped me better recognise and respond differently. It may have also helped the adults around me respond differently.
For this reason, prevention education must move beyond simple consent messaging. It needs to shift toward supporting young people to better understand healthy relationships, before harmful patterns become internalised. This type of education should support all young people to build healthier identities, self-worth and communication skills so they may feel confident in developing healthy connections where boundaries, communication and consent are more naturally understood and respected. Over time, this type of prevention education may also help reduce sexual assault, family violence and coercive relational harm across Victorian communities.
I believe this education would be most effective if provided through partnerships at high-schools - delivered by counsellors, sexual assault service educators, youth wellbeing organisations and lived experience-informed peer workers, trained in trauma-informed relational safety education.
Teachers and wellbeing staff should remain engaged so the program becomes embedded within everyday school culture. A developmentally tailored program inspired by preventative frameworks such as Melbourne psychologist Ursula Benstead’s Shark Cage concept, may provide a useful starting point.
Victoria has already invested significantly in Respectful Relationships education and broader family violence prevention initiatives, however many victim survivors continue to describe how difficult it was to recognise unsafe relational dynamics during adolescence. I know I did. As noted already, sexual violence and coercive harm are frequently perpetrated by people already known to survivors, reinforcing the importance of helping young people recognise unsafe relational dynamics within familiar environments.
School-based relationship education programs in the UK and US have shown positive impacts on student attitudes, relationship skills and school culture over time. They have positive short-, medium- and long-term outcomes for students and broader school culture.
Prevention education during these formative years has the potential to create long-term cultural change for young people before harmful behaviours become normalised. By helping adolescents develop healthier identities, safer relationship patterns and stronger emotional awareness, my proposal may reduce sexual violence, family violence and coercive harm across Victoria.
I thank you for your time and am grateful for the opportunity to share my idea grounded in my own lived-experience.
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