Being a journalist for several local cities puts me in contact with some amazing people, and sometimes gets me all worked up about certain causes. Last week, I went to chat with Grand Prairie Assistant Chief Ronnie Morris, and boy, did he get me fired up!
Morris wrote the verbiage for a bill, that has since been named SB-1109, or "The Christine Blubaugh Act." Blubaugh was only 16 years old when she was murdered by her boyfriend in 2000.
Even after 21 years, Christine has never left Morris's mind. The bill he wrote was filed by Senator Royce West in March. It is currently sitting in the Senate Education Committee.
The bill specifically asks to require public schools to provide instruction and materials and adopt policies relating to the prevention of child abuse, family violence, domestic violence (DV) and dating violence through education, specifically once in middle and junior high, and at least twice in high school.
If passed, the bill would require public schools to address the topics of the dating violence policy adopted by the student's school district; the prevalence of dating violence and the recognition of abuse warning signs; the procedures for reporting violence or abuse; and educational materials or resources available to students.
Read the entire bill HERE.
Morris recounted the impact that Christine’s death had on him.
“So, March 25th of 2000, is when [Christine] was killed by her boyfriend. I’d been a police officer three or four years. I was 24 years old. And something like that happening, especially because I was 24 and she was 16, so I wasn’t that much older than her, and a 16-year-old girl should never die like that. A friend of mine, at 15, was murdered. And that’s just not right. It’s not something that any family should go through. To be murdered by someone that you trust, and you love, is something that, in my 25 years of being a police officer, there’s a handful of things that have really stuck with me – that had such an impact on me – that I actively think about all the time. If I had any innocence left in me at age 24 from anything that I had done, [Christine’s death] took it all away.
Morris really started to pay attention to the statistics about child abuse, family violence, DV and dating violence, especially around Grand Prairie.
“So, thinking about that for many years and then constantly seeing victims of domestic abuse and families in crisis and the turmoil that it causes, it’s always been at the forefront [of my mind]. I’m a father of two girls. That really motivates me to get involved with DV awareness groups and become an advocate for victims of DV,” Morris said.
“So, fast forward to last year, which was my daughter’s first year of middle school, and she’s getting no education on this stuff. And she’s getting closer to Christine’s age, and close to dating. So [the question] that really consumes me is, ‘How am I going to protect my daughter because I can’t be with her all the time?’ said Morris.
That prompted him to look at what the law requires public schools to teach about DV, dating violence, child abuse and sexual assault.
“I was shocked to find that there is zero requirement under state law for public schools to provide any level of education on [these topics]. ZERO. Now, some school districts do it on their own. Grand Prairie School District doesn’t," Morris said.
“Christine, just like all the other victims of dating violence and DV, deserve to have their legacy not to be that they were murdered by someone that was trusted. They deserve for their legacy to be that their death saved others. Maybe that can give their families a little bit of closure and save other families from having to go through what the Blubaugh family has had to go through,” he said.
And so, Morris decided to try and do something about it.
His main focus these days is getting the bill and the subjects of child abuse, family violence, domestic violence (DV) and dating violence heard by legislators, citizens, families and children.
“We’ve started a Twitter social media campaign, so we have a hashtag on Twitter called #ChristineBlubaughAct. We’re really targeting Facebook posts and Tweets to elected officials who are on the Senate Education Committee.
“[Christine] has a twin sister, and that’s the tough thing is [Christine’s mother] looking at her twin sister, Dawn, and saying, ‘Oh this is what Christine would look like today.’ [Dawn] has kids and a family and Christine could have had that, too,” Morris said.
The bill that Morris penned is now traveling through the governmental system.
“Earlier this week, Senator Royce West read a memorial resolution on the floor of the Senate in honor of Christine. Something that he said in there was very impactful, I thought. And he talked a little bit about his bill. He said that she could have been a senator, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher. The biggest tragedy to me is she could have been a mother. Being a parent, as the father of two girls myself, is the best thing in the world. Just knowing that everything she had in front of her was taken away by someone she trusted and loved is as tragic as it can be,” said Morris.
One of Morris's primary concerns is that any education kids might get on the subject may also be incorrect.
“The vast majority of the time, a dating violence relationship or a DV relationship isn’t just a ‘one and done.’ There were signs leading up to that, and the problem is that everybody says, and everybody agrees, that education is the biggest weapon we have against poverty – to get people out of poverty, to get better jobs and the like. So, everybody recognizes that education is one of the most important tools we have to help us progress as people.
“But yet, we’re putting our public-school kids out there, unarmed to be able to deal with these things when they occur. Think about a 13-year-old girl who has never been touched by DV, has a good family and doesn’t know what [domestic violence] is. The next thing you know, they’re in the throes of it, by no fault of their own, and don’t know how to get out of it. But if they would’ve had some education in public school to say, ‘Here are the signs that you need to recognize that you’re going down that road, and here are some resources for you to be able to get out of [the situation],’ they might have gotten out of it or maybe never started it,” said Morris.
He also said that emotional needs have to be addressed as well.
“We need to tell them that, ‘Here are some things you are going to feel. You may feel fear, shame, embarrassment that maybe you got yourself into this and you don’t want anybody to know. Maybe your parents didn’t like your boyfriend, and you [feel like] you can’t tell them because then they’ll be right.’
“There are all kinds of reasons that people don’t seek help. But one of those reasons, which should never be a reason, is that they don’t seek help because they don’t know how to. We need to arm our kids with the tools they need to defend themselves against this scourge of DV, dating violence, child abuse and sexual assault, which can be in the form of date rape,” Morris said.
The information delivered to kids would be age appropriate.
“These are things that [young people] need to hear about, in an age-appropriate way. Let’s say you have a third grader who is growing up in an abusive home. To them, [abuse] is normal. So, here’s two things that can come from that: Since they think abuse is normal and they find themselves in an abusive relationship, maybe they won’t seek help because [they have been taught that] this is what love is. And two, for the abuser, this is how [he or she] learned how you show love to a woman. So, it’s education for both sides, both the victim and the abuser.
“Our greatest teachers [for things like this] are our parents. But here’s a staggering statistic: More than 81% of parents in Texas are not having conversations like this with their kids because they don’t believe that this is an actual issue. And that’s most likely because they came from homes where it was never an issue. I spoke to a woman in North Carolina the other day, who runs an outreach center for DV victims, and she was a victim herself, and never had those discussions with her own daughter. She said, ‘I maybe thought about date rape, but I never thought that, even though it happened to me, to tell my teenage daughter about this stuff.’ She came up in a good family, so she thought she was a one-off, not that there was a massive number of people that had gone through the same thing,” said Morris.
The statistics for middle- and high-schoolers that deal with child abuse, family violence, DV and dating violence are alarming.
“The statistics for middle school and high schoolers that are exposed to, or are victims themselves, of dating violence is outrageous. I’ve seen numbers from one in ten, and I’ve seen numbers that are one out of three of teenagers that have experienced a level of dating violence or DV. And it kind of depends on who you look at. Even if you look at the low end, one in ten, you’re telling us that 10% of our kids in public schools are victims of dating violence. How many millions and millions of public-school kids are in the state of Texas? There are 26 million people in the state of Texas. So, we’re talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of kids in the state of Texas. Texas leads the nation [statistically] in this stuff. We’re number 1 and number 2 in pretty much all the categories of child abuse and DV. So, with all of those things, to send our kids out there completely unequipped to be able to deal with this is a shame,” said Morris.
Brain development also comes into play. The human brain is not fully developed until age 25 or so, according to experts.
“They don’t have the ability mentally because they’re not developed enough, to handle this. So, if we have a bill, and this was my intention behind it, is that everyone knows that domestic violence is a cycle, and the stats are that it takes an average of seven times for a victim of DV to actually leave the situation. So, if we can break this cycle before it even starts, who knows what this could lead to down the road in reducing overall DV occurrences if we can get to them young. Just plugging this into the curriculum at school, how many lives can we save?” Morris said.
Morris said that he had to learn about these topics by his own experiences.
“Even though I do have these conversations with my kids [daughters age 13 and 10], I came up in an abusive [family]. I didn’t learn about this, but luckily there was something within me. I remember telling my sisters, ‘I’m never going to be like him.’ But to be so naive as to think that my daughters couldn’t fall into that, I would be fooling myself. So, I continue to have those conversations with my girls, and luckily to this point, there’s nothing that my girls won’t talk to me about. Sometimes, it’s uncomfortable, but I don’t want any subject to be off-limits,” he said.
Morris is emphatic about needing people to be aware of this subject and this bill.
“What we really need to push this forward is people, who are stakeholders in this, and we all are. We have kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews – we’re all stakeholders in this. If you think it can’t touch you, take it from [me]: I’ve seen it touch every person. DV, dating violence, child abuse and sexual assault is no respecter of religion, of race or socioeconomic status.
“This bill knows no party or political affiliation either. This is about as non-controversial a bill that exists, and it could save the lives of children, and everybody is interested in that. How much longer are we going to let this go on, and let our kids go through unarmed [with knowledge] and have to go through this on their own?” said Morris.
“The next step [for the bill] is to get it presented with public testimony. Now, if the Chair of the Senate Education Committee [Senator Larry Taylor] does not set it for public hearing, the bill dies. The GPISD School Board President [Aaron King] is 100% on board and sent a letter of support. Linda Ellis, the Superintendent of GPISD, sent in a letter of support. Teachers and educators support this and some have written letters.
“Right now, all contact needs to go through Senator Larry Taylor and Senator Eddie Lucio. Senator Taylor is the Chair and Lucio is the Vice Chair of the Senate Education Committee. Emails, phone calls and everything needs to go through those two senators’ offices. Our kids are our next statistic if we do nothing,” Morris said.
I couldn't agree more! If you support this bill and want a template of a letter to send to Taylor, Lucio or your local representative, click HERE.
Peace to all of the families who have suffered the tragedy of child abuse, DV, dating violence and sexual assault. You're not alone.