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SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST
How to Protect Your Daughter
from an Unhealthy Relationship
By Vicki Crompton and Ellen Zelda Kessner
Price: $22.95
272 pages,
Hardcover
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"Who can better understand the rage that erupts
and the pain that perseveres in the aftermath of murder than a mother who has lost her daughter to male violence? Vicki Crompton
and Ellen Kessner have written a brave and compassionate account in this important book."
- Dominick Dunne
"SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST is for parents who are concerned that thier daughter is an an unhealthy or abusive relationship that is based on personal experience and authoritative research that provides answers. While it is terribly painful when parents realize that their daughters are being hurt at the hands of someone who says they love them, SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST gives everyone involved the skills and strategies to end the abuse.
Jenny Crompton was a model fifteen-year-old girl - beautiful, smart, outgoing - but one afternoon during homecoming season, her ex-boyfriend, Mark Smith, confronted her at her home and killed her. Her mother, Vicki Crompton, has devoted the sixteen years since Jenny's death to speaking out on the topic of teen dating violence and abuse, something that affects at least 65 percent of teen relationships today.
In SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship, Crompton and Ellen Zelda Kessner confront the issue of teen dating abuse, explain why it happens, and provide parents the tools they need to uncover abuse and stop it before it is too late.
Contrary to popular belief, 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 boys who will take over their lives. SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST examines the experiences of victims of abuse, from the sixteen-year-old dancer who had to lie to her controlling boyfriend in order to spend any time with her friends to a teenage girl whose "playful" tussling with her boyfriend ended with her at the bottom of the stairs. Demeaning insults, isolation from friends and family, and physical violence - all under the guise of "true love" - are just some of the danger signs of unhealthy relationships among teens.
There are many parallels to be drawn between abusive teen and adult relationships. The difference for teens is that they face enormous pressure to have a boyfriend in order to achieve status among peers. Teenagers are also still developing emotionally; they are impulsive, rebellious, and belligerent or uncommunicative with their parents. They definitely are not equipped to identify and break the bonds of damaging relationships without help.
SAVING BEAUTY FROM THE BEAST is a practical resource with insights and advice from psychologists and threat-assessment professionals who discuss prevention strategies and the most effective ways to communicate when the last thing a daughter wants is her parents' advice.
Saving
Beauty From the Beast
How To Protect Your Daughter From an Unhealthy Relationship
By Vicki Crompton and Ellen Zelda Kressner
The
book has gotten plenty of media exposure: Vicki Crompton has appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael, The Montel Williams Show, CBS
This Morning, Oprah and Inside Edition.
In a 2003 “Montel Williams” show on dating violence, Vicki Crompton, co-author of Saving Beauty From The Beast, did more than plug her book, co-written with Ellen Zelda Kessner; she told the highly personal story of her daughter Jenny’s murder at the hands of boyfriend Mark Smith, and offered advice to young women and parents torn apart by callous teenage boys, adolescent angst, parent-daughter conflicts, and a culture that, as the book points out, romanticizes forbidden love, taking what you want at any cost, love that hurts, and having a boyfriend.
Crompton, hand-in-hand with parenting author Kessner, has turned her daughter’s shattering, unthinkable death into a brilliant, readable book that is more necessary than ever in a world of Britney Spears and Eminem. A review from writer Anna Quindlen points out that another generation of teenage boys has grown up not knowing or caring how to treat girls, as evidenced by the boys who isolate, stalk, criticize, rape, and murder women, and in one case, make the girl an accessory to shoplifting (she broke off the relationship after her parents gave her a cooling-off period and her father told her “This is not the way someone shows his love.”)
The book draws on real teenagers and their parents from all backgrounds, speaking in clear, intelligent voices, articulating the myriad pressures young women today face when involved in a love that hurts. Crompton and Kressner do not make light of peer pressure, or fail to note that the very rich and the very poor of today’s youth are the most at risk to become abusers, or shrink from advising parents to “back off” and accept the relationship. The personal safety plan for daughters in abusive relationships, the safety plan for daughters who have left the relationship, the ingenious suggestion of a “code word” signaling danger, are useful tools that make this more than another teens-in-crisis book. The coda of Crompton confronting Mark Smith in prison serves as a poignant reminder and incentive for all parents of teenage girls to read and share this book with their “Beautys.”