You are listening to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Just Rural Podcast series that highlights innovative programs and success stories from rural communities across the United States. This is Cyndi Simpson, Rural Project Specialist with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This interview was recorded on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 with Chief Investigator John Haynes of the City of Durant Police Department in Durant, Mississippi. Investigator Haynes is a community partner of a Rural Grantee agency, the Community Students Learning Center of Lexington, Mississippi. The Community Students Learning Center is implementing a mentoring and peer support program to end intimate partner violence among teens. So I know a little bit about your program in Mississippi and I’d like to hear more from you about that and also for you based on your role with the program what has been a real learning moment for you, a good success story or a moment that really shines for you since your project has begun? Actually I came onboard with the program a little over a year and a half ago and the thing that has struck me most is I was not aware of the type of violence that was going on within our youth and because of the board that is structured we have a lot of school personnel on that board and most of these offenses never reach law enforcement, but they talk with the student counselors and teachers about things that other people are going through in the community and we realized that those were instances of domestic abuse and sexual abuse and just the knowledge was not there for me, so it was a big experience to know that all this was going on in our rural communities. And it sounds like that was a surprise to you in some ways. It was. It was and so often the myth is that these things don’t happen in rural communities and it’s somewhat safer in rural communities and it’s really just taboo to know that it does and I was one of those who didn’t realize these things were happening to our kids because again, they never get reported to law enforcement because of the fact that especially with teens they don’t see the dangers in the things that they’re going through. They just seem to think that it’s youthful dating and fun, so. Really it’s almost normalized for them in some ways. Pretty much, that’s a better way of saying it, yes. And so what is your role in the program or how do you interact with the program? My role basically is as a respectful person in the community. I coach little league basketball and I'm also a referee and I've met with coaches and what we’ve done is to institute young men learning from other men in the community and to be involved in this youth camp they have to attend domestic violence courses. After every week of basketball we have a man-to-man conference and we talk about the dangers and what not to do and to try to stay away from the pitfalls of sexual abuse and the peer pressure of having sex at all. And what has been – can you think about a particular story or a time or a young person that you’ve interacted with that really stands out for you? There are really so many. The one that I would think that stood out most with me is that this young man was dating the young lady and it just seemed so innocent as far as everyone was concerned that he would strangle her and most people think it’s choking. They were both athletes and after every game they would talk or laugh and if they – he would call her out her name and choke her and these were things that I started noticing and seeing and I went to him and talked to him about them and he has a younger sister and I told him that these things are dangerous. These are the things that people would see somewhere else as being detrimental to you staying free and about two days later he called me and he told me that his younger sister had been assaulted by a guy that was living with the family. They weren’t actually kin, but he was living there because he was from another state and what he said was these were the lessons that he learned from this guy and now that he could see once I told him what was going on he could see the dangers in them and that taught him a lesson that he didn’t want to go down the path that this young man has gone down, so that’s maybe one of them because this guy has a future in athletics and it would have been a shame for him to have gotten caught in something just because of his inability to know that it was not a good thing to do. So it sounds like your program is giving youth really strong messages about what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior. And that’s what we’re trying to do, yes. Yes. Is there anything else you’d like to share about the work that you’ve been doing? Nothing else out of the ordinary that anyone else is doing, which is trying to get it all formulated and get it where we are doing a lot better job and to cease any of this happening within our communities. Well thank you very much for sharing. It was great to hear. Thank you. This project was supported by grant number 2009-TA-AX-K042, awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, the findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this program are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women. For more information on our Rural Project visit www.nsvrc.org.