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                                And Tina's Story

 Jim and Elsa Croucher of Monroe were plunged into the world of domestic violence four days before Christmas in 1992 when their youngest child, 18 year old Tina, was murdered by an abusive ex boyfriend. For several years their grief was overwhelming, forcing them both into early retirement. They turned that grief into something positive and founded Citizens Against Domestic Violence in 1996. Determined to help save others from Tina’s fate, Jim and Elsa created a Teen Dating Violence Prevention Program and have delivered, for free, a powerful multi media presentation, “Dating Violence: 101” to middle, high school, and college students for the past 15 years.  To date they have reached nearly 100,000 students.

That number will soon grow to over 920,000 each year thanks to the “Tina Croucher Act,” which was passed with the assistance of CADV.  Named after the Croucher’s daughter Tina, the law was enacted last year and requires every student in grades 7 through 12 in every school district in Ohio to be taught about abusive relationships and how to have healthy ones.

The Croucher’s are now assisting with The Tina Project which was created by a Northeast Ohio coalition of organizations that deal directly with violence. The coalition developed a comprehensive curriculum for teachers, staff, students, and their parents.  Efforts are underway to bring The Tina Project to all 88 counties in Ohio and provide schools with resources and support as they address violence among teenagers as well as assuring Ohio schools are in compliance with the new law.

Since the passage of  “Tina’s Law,” the Crouchers have been called upon to speak nationally about teen dating violence; at workshops, conferences, and through television and newspaper reports. They have received recognition by Speaker of the House John Boehner, Ohio Senator Gary Cates, and former Governor Ted Strickland. Honors for the couple have included the National Sunshine Peace Award, and Elsa recently was awarded the Middletown Soroptomist Club’s Woman of the Year Award and the AK Steel Magnolia Award.

 Jim attended the University of Kentucky and Miami University and worked for the State of Ohio. Elsa attended the College of Business in Tennessee and worked for the Middletown School District.  The parents of four children, the Crouchers sadly lost another daughter, Connie, at age 26 from congenital heart disease and have helped raise her son, Ryan. Their daughter Terri and husband Bob are teachers and have three children. Son, Tim, is an electrical engineer. He and wife Linda have two children.

                                                 Tina’s Story

 When our daughter, Tina, was in high school, she met a young man whom she thought was the love of her life.  He played football, was tall, blonde, and had a beautiful smile.   What we did not know was the fact that his normal was abuse that he had witnessed in his own home all of his life.  The yelling, screaming, cursing, hitting, threatening, and all of the rest that goes along with family abuse. Consequently, he did not know how to have a normal relationship, so he started telling Tina where to go, what to wear, who to talk to, and what time to be home.  Tina was very straight forward and strong willed.  She was one of the young ladies who would have said, “There is no man going to tell me what to do!”  However, when she did allow this to happen, her boyfriend then started slapping her and punching her.  When she came home one day with a big bruise on the side of her face, I asked her where it came from.  She very nonchalantly replied that several of her friends had been playing football and the football hit her face.  Due to the fact that she was very straight forward, I believed her, when, in fact, this young man had punched her.

During their on-off relationship of several months, this boy displayed some behavior that gave us reason to wonder about him – bursts of anger, getting upset over some of Tina’s friends being around, wanting to be with Tina constantly, and even transferring from his high school to the school where Tina attended.   On one occasion, he found Tina in the school hallway talking to another guy.  He totally lost it!  He grabbed Tina and threw her against a locker and called her some inappropriate names.  That day he was suspended from school.  When Tina got home from school that day, we told her that the behavior of this young man was very inappropriate and that she must break up with him, which she did.  When he heard this news, he became hostile and belligerent.  He spent most of his time calling or searching for Tina.  If there was no one at home, upon returning, we would find obscene messages on our phone.  He was on our street constantly trying to see Tina.  He appeared at the school many times, looking in the windows to see what Tina was doing.  The whole school was on alert, with the football players walking Tina into the building in the a.m., and out of the building in the p.m.   He showed up at our church on a Sunday morning after the service to harass us and call us names.  The youth pastor escorted him to Middletown Hospital and tried to get him admitted to the psychiatric ward, but due to the fact that he was 18 and had no insurance, he was not admitted.   He finally spent a night in jail after showing up at my job and creating a scene causing an assistant principal to call police.

My husband, Jim, and I both believed that this would all pass, and that this young man would move on to another girlfriend.  He did have other girlfriends but his obsession never waned for Tina.  Wherever Tina went, this young man would “just happen” to be there – at the mall, movies, a dance, school functions or whatever. On one occasion he followed Tina to a gas station where he proceeded to talk to her while she pumped gas.  With the beautiful smile that he had, he persuaded her that he had been to counseling and had changed and that she should start dating him again.  When Jim and I realized that Tina was seeing  the young man again, we told her that he was not allowed at our house or to call on the phone.  After all, we did have a restraining order against him.  We informed her that if she chose to see him since she was now considered an adult, that she must meet him away from the house and she did.

            It took only a few weeks for her to figure out that the young man had not changed and she broke up with him again. Tina was now working part time and going to Miami part time, and again the young man started stalking and harassing her. 

            On December 21st Jim and I left for work on a Monday morning, leaving Tina sleeping in – no school or work that day.  Since Tina and I had plans later that day, I started trying to call her around 9:30.  No answer.  I called again – no answer.  This went on for a couple of hours when I finally called a neighbor and asked her to check on Tina.  In the meantime, I felt compelled to go home.  As I drove home I realized that something dreadful had happened and when I turned off the main road to my subdivision, I saw all of the police cars, the vans from the  TV channels, and the coroner’s car.  When I drove up in front of my house, a body was being rolled out.  The young man had gone into our house and into Tina’s bedroom where he shot her in the head as she slept.  He then killed himself in her bedroom FOUR DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

            Hundreds of people filed through the line at Tina’s visitations.  We were practically numb and of course in the state of shock.  Her funeral was Christmas Eve day.

            After a lengthy period of grieving, as we looked back over the course of events, two things stood out in our mind:    

    1) Many of Tina’s friends had come through the receiving line at visitations  sobbing and telling us that they knew full well that Tina was being abused, but THEY DID NOT TELL ANYONE!!!  Their comments were, “If we had only told you, maybe things would be different today”.                                                    

    2) Many parents and grandparents came to us and said, “That could be my daughter or granddaughter”, or “my daughter just got out of a mess like this”.  In fact, the director of the mortuary that we had chosen was incredibly angry over our situation because he had just gotten his daughter out of a very similar situation with an ex-boyfriend.

            Our situation is not an isolated case.  We get feedback from teenagers almost daily with stories of their own about how they are trying to deal with abusive situations from their boyfriend or girlfriend.