Violence Comes to Classroom--in a Benign Fashion

Self-conscious 13-year-olds gathered in a classroom at Wilmington Junior High School last week to hear about a subject not often taught in textbooks--domestic violence.

“What is sexual molestation?” asked the guest speaker, passing out orange wallet cards with the phone numbers of various help lines used by abused children, battered women, drug addicts and the homeless.

After some giggling subsided, the speaker said: “It’s when someone touches you where you don’t want to be touched.”

Hands shot up when he asked if anyone had ever been screamed at, yelled at or otherwise verbally abused.

If the questions were new ones for the seventh-graders, they were almost as new for their guest. The speaker, Stephen Giampaoli, is not a social worker. He is superintendent of maintenance at the Unocal refinery about 10 blocks from the school.

He came to the school as part of Wilmington Alive, a program designed to reduce family violence in Wilmington by showing young people a way to get help. Giampaoli was trained by South Bay Coalition Alive, which recruited 14 professionals to make the presentations in the Wilmington school.

600 Students in 3 Days

In three days of visiting the school, program coordinator Christine Campisi and Unocal volunteers spoke to more than 600 students in 26 classes.

Campisi said the professionals deliver a message--the presentation includes a hard-hitting video about child abuse--and a service: resource cards that provide students in English and Spanish with phone numbers telling them where they can get help.

“The main thing is to make kids aware that they don’t have to live with the secrecy,” Campisi said.

Wilmington Alive has had some immediate impact. One volunteer in the Wilmington Alive program told students they could call her personally, and “three seventh-graders called her, one with a drinking problem, and the others with parents who drank. That’s a direct result of her being in the classroom and telling them they could call,” Campisi said.

Because the Wilmington program is new, and because she does not track calls to the agencies listed on the resource cards, Campisi cannot say exactly how many students make use of the things they learned.

But South Bay Coalition Alive Executive Director Ann Gubser says her group, which offers the program in other communities as well, judges the program’s effectiveness by the continuous requests for resource cards from police departments, community service groups and schools. More than 60,000 were given out during the Beach Cities Alive program, which Campisi spearheaded and took to five schools last year.

The program is aimed at improving the lives of children by focusing on key factors in family violence. Campisi said that when she asked Wilmington Junior High students what causes family violence, they often said drugs and alcohol. “They’re living with drugs and alcohol on a day-to-day basis. Their responses seem to indicate they’ve seen a lot of drug and alcohol abuse in their families,” she said.

South Bay Coalition Alive programs have been directed mostly at seventh-graders because at that age children start making decisions for themselves, such as whether they should go outside the family for help, Campisi said.

Violence Documented

The need to do so is clearly there, the statistics indicate.

For the first 11 months of the year, there were 507 reported cases of domestic violence in Harbor City, Harbor Gateway, Wilmington and San Pedro, according to figures from Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division. There were 15 reported cases of child abuse in the same period.

“These kinds of programs are long overdue” throughout Los Angeles, said Wilmington Junior High School Principal Michael O’Sullivan. “We don’t even begin to have any idea of the kinds of problems these students face. We only see them six hours a day.”

He said there is no question the programs are worth it, adding: “If it only affects one kid, I consider it an unqualified success.”

With more money, Campisi said, she would be able to reach other schools in the community, such as Holy Family School.

Unocal paid $350 to Wilmington Alive to sponsor the program at Wilmington Junior High, modeled after similar successful programs in San Pedro and the beach cities, and the company also gave its employees time off to visit the schools.

Kaiser Permanente paid for 10,000 cards to be printed, but corporate or other sponsors pay for training, staff salaries and coordinating costs by “adopting” a local school. The schools themselves pay nothing.

“You’ve got to talk about drugs and alcohol,” said Unocal plant engineer Jim Bishop. “The important thing is to let them know they’re not helpless, and if they choose to, they can change the situation and make things happen.”

Bishop said that although it does not always appear that students are listening, he is sure the message hits home. “They know a lot more than we give them credit for.”

When Giampaoli addressed about 25 students in Rick Teran’s seventh-grade science class last week, he found them alert and perceptive.

He told them that when he was growing up, there was a code that if you swore not to tell anyone something, you kept your promise. A secret was a secret.

“If you’re a good friend, wouldn’t you want to help that person?” Giampaoli asked.

Heads nodded all around the classroom. Knapsacks at their feet, the students sat attentively in a circle and yelled out answers without raising their hands.

Christine Ducazau, 12, said she had a friend whose parents were separated and whose father abused drugs. Referring to her friend’s visits to her father, Christine said: “She goes over there, but she doesn’t like it.”

Christine slipped her Wilmington Alive card into her knapsack and said she would use it if she needed to.