150 boys at Gorton High School in Yonkers to attend program, Tuesday, March 30, 2004.

WHITE PLAINS, NY - March 16, 2004 -- To help reduce dating violence at its most frequent source, the Pace Women's Justice Center (WJC) began a training program last summer for boys at private all-boys schools including Iona Prep., Fordham Prep., Archbishop Stepinac High School and Mount Saint Michael Academy, all in New York's Westchester County and the New York City borough of the Bronx. Now the program is expanding into the public schools with an initial event at Gorton High School in Yonkers from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, March 30, 2004.

 "There is an epidemic of violence in our culture today," says Victoria L. Lutz, the former Westchester senior district attorney who is the WJC executive director. She says, "Rates of violence in dating relationships among high school students have been measured at between nine and 41 percent. Among high school girls surveyed from ages 14 to 18, about 20 percent reported that they had been hit, slapped, shoved, or forced into sexual activity by a dating partner."

"This is a male problem and it needs a male solution," she adds.

She hopes that the programs will help boys learn about and prevent not only emotional, psychological and physical abuse, but also the sexual molestation and violent hazing in high schools that recently have been in the news.

Encouraging responsibility in teenagers is a goal of Gorton High School's Meeting Hate with Humanity Program. The event will offer 150 11th grade-boys an intensive workshop with Lutz .The Pace Women's Justice Center's Teen Dating Violence Program session will include video, role playing and discussion of myths and realities.

Meanwhile, 140 girls will attend a Woman and Empowerment panel organized by Gorton.

"One of the goals of Meeting Hate with Humanity is to help students realize that they have a responsibility to help stop intolerance and the violent and exclusionary acts it supports," said Beth Quinn, teacher and coordinator of the initiative, now in its sixth year.

The Pace Women's Justice Center pioneered 24/7 legal services to battered women. Staff attorneys carry beepers so they can be reached around the clock.

The Center has emerged as the national leader in first response legal services for battered women by partnering with the White Plains Department of Public Safety and other Westchester police departments so victims of domestic violence can receive legal services when they need them most, even at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Each year, the WJC represents over 1,500 battered women and their children in family court. Since 1999 law students have contributed over 10,000 hours of free legal assistance, which have helped garner more than $2,000,000 in child support for victims.

In addition, the Center conducts more than 100 training programs a year in preventing and dealing with domestic violence, elder abuse, sexual assaults, and other problems, for thousands of judges, law enforcement officers, attorneys and law students. It has produced public service announcements for the federal Violence Against Women Office, written judicial training manuals, and published dozens of articles.

Part of the Pace University School of Law, the WJC recently was given New York Governor George Pataki's 2003 Justice, Freedom, and Courage Award to End Domestic Violence.

Founded in 1976, Pace Law School is a New York Law School with a suburban campus in White Plains, N.Y., 20 miles north of New York City. Part of Pace University, the school offers the J.D. program for full-time and part-time day and evening students. Its postgraduate program includes the LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in Environmental Law and an LL.M. in Comparative Legal Studies. Pace has one of the nation's top-rated Environmental Law programs and its Clinical Education program also is nationally ranked, offering clinics in domestic violence prosecution, environmental law, securities arbitration, criminal justice and disability rights. www.law.pace.edu 

Pace is a comprehensive, independent university with campuses in New York City, Pleasantville and White Plains, NY and a Hudson Valley Center at Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, NY. More than 14,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Lubin School of Business, School of Computer Science and Information Systems, School of Education, Lienhard School of Nursing and Pace Law School. www.pace.edu