FARMINGTON -- Enter Mt. Blue High School today and covering one wall in the lobby are pretty pink Valentine's Day hearts.

But these hearts don't represent your typical cute sentiments of love. They are pledges male and female students are signing to show their support of combating dating violence.

A sample of the pledges: "I have the right to be listened to by family and friends." "I have the right to say no and be respected." "I have the right to start a relationship slowly, to say 'I want to get to know you better before I get involved.'"

Bethany Patrick, a 15-year-old from Farmington who was collecting pledges on Tuesday, said teens think bad things won't happen to them. When some girls find themselves in abusive relationships, they might try to ignore the signs, Patrick said.

"It is not always hitting," she said. "It could be someone trying to control you and pressure you."

Lynette Bragg, a 16-year-old from Wilton, says young people need to know the difference between a healthy relationship and a destructive one. "If people read these messages, they might take the time to think about them."

Teresa Hawkes, 16, of Wilton, said she knows girls who are pregnant because their boyfriends pressured them to have sex and now, she said, their lives are ruined.

And Ashley Girard, 17, of Wilton, said if someone is in an abusive relationship, he or she may not realize it at first.

"But they need to get out of it before it is too late," she said.

Students in a school club and members of the Civil Rights Team are working on the project with their advisers and school-based advocate Kristin Plummer from Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services, Franklin County's rape crisis center in Farmington.

Plummer said the girls also are making cut-out, life-size silhouettes of the 18 Maine men and women who were killed during domestic violence attacks in the past three years. Another project will be designing and wearing T-shirts that have statistics on sexual assault, such as, "One in four men will use violence against their partner in their lifetime."

There also are posters around school and on each cafeteria table with information on how to recognize signs of dating violence.

Advisor Hattie DeRaps said it is important to make people aware of the pervasiveness of dating violence.

"There is so much domestic violence in Maine and among teenagers," she said. "Even if only one student reads something and tells someone about what is going on their lives, than it is worth it."

• For information on National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week, go to the U. S. Department of Justice's Office of Violence against Women's Web site, www.enditnow.gov.
• To contact SAVES, go to to: www.savesrapecrisis.org or call 778-9522. The 24-hour, confidential
  state-wide support telephone number is 1-800-871-7741 or 1-866-740-9516 by cell phone.
  

Betty Jespersen -- 778-6991

bjespersen@centralmaine.com