About the Authors

vickicrompton.com

About the Authors

Sharing Jenny's Story, Helping Others

Crompton-Tetter
Crompton-Tetter uses her listening skills and sense of humor when working with teens.

I don’t lecture or go into theories or statistics,” says Victoria Crompton-Tetter (MA ‘95). “When I speak to professionals, parents, and teens, I give a brief description of Jenny’s story and the resulting journey it sent me on. I talk about what experts used to think about causes of teen dating violence, and I expand the information I learned while researching my book.”

Jenny Crompton was a confident 15-year-old girl—beautiful, intelligent, and outgoing—but one afternoon during homecoming season, her ex-boyfriend, Mark Smith, confronted her in her home and killed her.

Vicki Crompton-Tetter, Jenny’s mother, has devoted the 16 years since Jenny’s death to speaking out on the topic of teen dating violence and abuse. Dating violence affects at least 65 percent of teen relationships today, and Crompton-Tetter wants parents to know that this type of controlling behavior does happen to teens even if, fortunately, most of us do not see the same irreversible outcome that the Tetters did with Jenny

In Saving Beauty from the Beast: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship, social pressure to have a boyfriend in order to achieve status among peers, but they are also inexperienced when it comes to romantic relationships. Paradoxically, it is often the girls with the highest self-esteem, the girls who do well in school and are respected by their peers, who are most vulnerable to the abuse of controlling boyfriends.

Crompton-Tetter works hard to offer parents sound advice to empower their daughters.

“As those of us working in education know all too well, teenagers are still developing emotionally—they are impulsive, rebellious, and often belligerenCrompton-Tetter and her co-author Ellen Zelda Kessner confront the issue of teen dating abuse, try to explain why it happens, and provide parents with the tools they need to uncover and stop abuse.

Eight years after Jenny’s death the process of forgiveness started for Crompton-Tetter on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where, by satellite, she confronted her daughter’s killer for the first time. Crompton-Tetter had previously sought permission from the state of Iowa to speak with Jenny’s killer. Initially the state said no, but after seeing a copy of the Oprah show, they offered Crompton-Tetter an opportunity to meet with him through the Restorative Justice Program.

At 44 years old, Crompton-Tetter’s acceptance into The University of Iowa’s Counselor Education program was a life-changing event. As a mom with a full-time job who drove 60 miles in to campus every day from Davenport, Crompton-Tetter says, “the supportive and understanding faculty were an invaluable source of strength.”

Still, the day that Crompton-Tetter was accepted, she cried—wondering why was she the one who was able to go because after all, it was Jenny who had planned to attend The University of Iowa. It always made Crompton-Tetter’s success at Iowa bitter-sweet.

“It should have been Jenny,” she said.

There are many parallels to be drawn between abusive teen relationships and abusive adult relationships. “Though teen girls may be resourceful, smart, and capable, they simply are not equipped to identify and break the bonds of damaging relationships without help and guidance.”

When Crompton-Tetter speaks to teens, she brings Jenny to life for them.

“I want them to recognize that she was very much like all of them. I talk about her relationship with Mark, telling real stories of conversations with Jenny, actions Jenny took, and the advice of her friends,” she said. “I don’t gloss over her death. I provide enough information to underscore the brutality and also the terrible loss to her friends and family.”

Crompton-Tetter currently works as a crisis counselor for homeless teens at the John Lewis Community Services Youth Emergency Shelter in Davenport. Jason Franklin, the shelter’s service coordinator, says Crompton-Tetter has all the skills of a good counselor.

“Vicki enjoys her job. She loves working with kids and it shows in everything she does,” Franklin said. “She is not only dependable, she’s a great listener. She’s supportive and encouraging, and most of all, she has a terrific sense of humor, which is beneficial when working with teenagers and in crisis counseling.”

Thanks to Crompton-Tetter’s uncommon bravery and drive, these sensitive issues are subjects of discussion today. People like Crompton-Tetter bring concrete, positive change to the individuals who need it most.

Ellen Zelda Kessner(Home Site)

Ellen Zelda Kessner, has written articles that have appeared in many national magazines. She tells you in her own words how she became co-author of SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST:

On April 22, l980, my daughter Sheryl was murdered in her California home. She was 28 years old and had a nine-month old baby in her arms when she was shot multiple times. But her husband was not her murderer. He too was shot that evening by a business crony who owed him money. He and the baby survived. Back in l980, I was aware of domestic violence only in a peripheral way. I knew it was a feminist issue. But my daughter was not a battered woman. She seemed happily married. It was only much later that I realized the power of emotional abuse, that from the time she first started seeing, at age 21, the man who would become her husband, she was in a relationship that had all the earmarks of power and control-- by him—leading her to follow him from New York to L. A., and to the point of the killer’s gun that April night. Since the l960’s, as a free lance writer, I had frequently described the happenings in my family life with my husband and three children— in pieces for newspapers and magazines as well as episodes in my checkered career as playwright, realtor and substitute teacher. So in the l980’s it seemed only natural, or I should say, necessary, to write about my most traumatic life experience --“A Murder in the Family,” for Woman’s Day. (I have recently written a memoir—“AFTER THE VIOLENCE: Seeking My Daughter, Myself, and the Child She Left Behind.” AFTERTHEVIOLENCE.COM)

An editor at Redbook who saw the Woman’s Day piece, assign me to write “Sweetheart Murders," an investigative report about the growing number of teen girls murdered by their boyfriends. As both bereaved mother and writer, I attended a national conference of Parents of Murdered Children where I met Vicki Crompton—in deep mourning for her daughter Jenny, whose sweet sixteenth birthday celebration would never be. I also met several other parents who agreed that I could interview them in depth by telephone. Vicki and I spent hours and hours on the phone. I became deeply, emotionally involved in Jenny’s life and death and in Vicki’s family—as Vicki did in Sheryl’s and mine. We became a mini-support group for each other.
The story of Jenny Crompton turned out to be the focus of the Redbook piece. Working with her on Jenny’s story—and all the others -- not only haunted me, but opened my eyes to a problem I never knew existed--dating violence. The issue was barely recognized at the time--even by experts who were documenting the Power and Control Cycles of violent marriages. “Sweetheart Murders,” published in Redbook in l988, was the first article about teen dating violence issue to appear in the mainstream media and attract national and international attention. For years afterwards. Vicki was asked to appear on the major talk shows—including Oprah—and she became a popular presenter for schools and organizations, a consultant to the Violence Against Women Office in the U.S. Department of Justice. With her more than two decades of educating students, parents and teachers, she has been in essence a “founding mother” of the recent campaign, Moms and Dads for Education (MADE) to Stop Teen Dating Abuse.

SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST was commissioned in 2003 by Little, Brown and Company to alert moms and dads about teen dating violence. In it, Vicki and I were to write about young women, who, unlike Jenny, did survive, but were scarred by the emotional/sexual/physical abuse. We were to include their parents' accounts and the insights of the best experts in the field of ways that they could intervene. How were we going to find these girls to interview? Impossible, I thought. But I was wrong, It was easy. Wherever we turned, young women, many middle-class from the heartland as well as cities and suburbs, told us stories of abusive boyfriends. And their parents revealed their own anguish and how they tried to cope. And now on our blog, The Gals That Got Away, we invite you to share your stories of how you or your daughter broke away safely and finally from an unhealthy relationship.