NEW YORK - Jessica Lee endured abuse from her high school boyfriend for two years, breaking up only after he burned her with cigarettes and slammed a beer bottle over her head. She has now joined an ambitious initiative to help teens in similar plights.

On Thursday, Ms. Lee and other former victims were on hand in New York to help announce the creation of the first nationwide hotline specifically designed to combat the widespread problem of teen dating violence.

It will be run by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which had mostly served adults. Calls to the new line will be answered by teens, plus other young adults, in the belief that young abuse victims would be more comfortable confiding in someone their own age.

"I wrestled over telling people what was happening to me because I was ashamed," said Ms. Lee, 19, now a freshman in Missouri State University's pre-nursing program in her hometown of Springfield, Mo.

"I was in denial - I blamed myself. I wished there'd been somewhere to turn besides my family or friends - a hotline with someone I didn't know but who understood."

Sheryl Cates, executive director of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said the existing line gets 17,000 calls a month from across the country. About 10 percent are from teens, mostly concerned with dating violence.

When fully functioning early next year, the new hotline will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Teens will field calls from noon to 2 a.m., and 18- to 24-year-olds will work overnight to serve college-age callers.

Ms. Cates anticipates 1,000 calls a month to the new line. Her center in Austin will recruit dozens of new staff members - some volunteer, some paid - to handle the calls after undergoing 60 hours of training.

One prerequisite of the job is patience: Ms. Cates said calls from teens to the existing hotline average more than 20 minutes in length, twice that of adult calls.

Ms. Cates said there are only a few regional hotlines specializing in coping with teen dating violence. The head of a nonprofit running one such line welcomed the prospect of a national service.

"Absolutely, it's needed," said Stephanie Flaherty of the battered-women's support group DOVE in Quincy, Mass. "A lot of teens want to talk about what's happening to them, but they're afraid of it getting back to their parents."

In Texas, half of all teenagers and young adults have experienced dating violence, either as a target or an abuser, according to a survey released in August by the state attorney general. A recent national survey by Teenage Research Unlimited found that one-third of teen girls in a dating relationship have feared for their physical safety.

Jill Murray, a psychotherapist from Laguna Niguel, Calif., who has written about dating violence, said the problem is worsening, in part because of coarse youth culture. She also described a new form of dating abuse, using cellphones.

"You've got boyfriends sending scary and demeaning text messages, sometimes in the middle of the night," she said. "The girl must sleep with her cellphone on vibrate, so her parents don't hear it, and she must answer his message or face bad consequences."

Among the former victims joining Ms. Lee on Thursday in New York was a 17-year-old high school student from Palo Alto, Calif., whose abusive relationship with a varsity football player ended after he kicked her across a room, causing a concussion.

Sarah, whose family has asked that her last name not be disclosed, said a dismaying aspect of her ordeal was a lack of support from friends when she finally reported the abuse. Some threw eggs at her house; others contended she was wrong to get her boyfriend in trouble.

For more information about the National Domestic Violence Hotline, log on to http://www.ndvh.org. To reach the hotline, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY). This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow. More headlines...

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