The Bahamas Crisis Centre (BCC) has concluded that many teens in The Bahamas are facing the same domestic abuse issues that adults are forced to deal with in their relationships.

As a result of the alarming information, the BCC is planning to expand its Healthy Relationships campaign to schools in the Family Islands, in a bid to help reduce violence in teen relationships nationwide.

Crisis Centre counselor and volunteer Donna Nicolls said the conclusion was based on research and information the organisation has received.

“We know that there is a lot of violence among young people in their relationships,” she said. “This is what spurred us to do the Healthy Relationships campaign in schools. This has been our second year and we try to go into all of the 12th grades and explain to them what a healthy relationship is and what are some red flags to look for.”

As it stands now, the programme is only available to high school students in New Providence, but Crisis Centre officials are looking to change that.

She added that the campaign finds ways to encourage teenagers in relationships to understand how they get into abusive situations and how to seek help getting out.

Another major part of the campaign, she said, is teaching students that their environment plays a major role in their behaviour.

“The children feed of what’s happening around them and if there’s violence generally in the community among the adults then it will happen among the children too,” Ms. Nicolls added.

“We plan to take this to the Family Islands as well but we’ll have to get that support. It’s something the Family Island teachers and schools have asked us for so it’s definitely something that we are thinking about doing.”

Because all of the workers at the Bahamas Crisis Centre are volunteers, Ms. Nicolls said they will now have to find and train workers on various islands in order to get the campaign up and running in the Family Islands.