Crawl in a hole?
Curse the world?
Want to die?
For four years, Jim and Elsa Croucher, of Monroe, pulled the blinds shut, turned off the lights, and mourned the loss of their 18-year-old daughter, Tina, who was slain by her abusive ex-boyfriend on Dec. 22, 1992. He then turned the gun on himself.
“It was tough, tough,” Elsa Croucher said.
“A bad time,” Jim Croucher said.
Eventually, unable to work, they retired early — Elsa from the Middletown City School District and Jim from the state of Ohio.
“We were severly depressed,” he said.
But the Crouchers kept remembering the words Tina’s girlfriends whispered to them during her visitation — “We should have told you something was wrong.”
Jim and Elsa Croucher say their daughter’s boyfriend was a “bit different,” but they never suspected domestic violence. Tina blamed each bruise, each scratch on a freak accident.
It’s estimated that some form of violence affects one out of every three teen relationships — with parents often kept in the dark.
Finally, after Tina called off the relationship for what she hoped was the final time, the Crouchers said her boyfriend went “off the edge.”
In 1996, the Crouchers established Citizens Against Domestic Violence, a nonprofit organization that educates teens about the dangers of domestic violence.
On Monday, Dec. 28, House Bill 19, dubbed Tina’s Law, was signed by Gov. Ted Strickland. Under the law, school districts must adopt a policy to prevent and address dating violence at school and train staff on prevention education for seventh- through 12th-grade health classes.
The bill also requires the Ohio Board of Education to develop a dating violence prevention policy for schools.
For the Crouchers — and teens around the state — Christmas came three days late.
Elsa called the signing of the bill “a wonderful, wonderful day.”
She said the bill should “enhance tremendously” their crusade to reduce teen violence. They will perform teacher in-services and continue speaking in schools.
“This means we won’t have to do it all now,” Elsa said. “It’s a relief in that sense.”
What would Tina think?
“She’s up in heaven saying, ‘Go, go, go.’ She’d be proud that we turned a tragedy into a positive,” her father said.
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