Emotional maltreatment in adolescents' everyday lives: furthering sociolegal reforms and social service provisions

The article examines sociolegal responses to adolescent victimization, particularly responses to the emotional dimensions of their violent personal relationships. The investigation reveals how the legal system generally fails to recognize youth's emotional maltreatment. Responses tend to consider emotional maltreatment as subordinate and secondary to some legally prohibited sexual and physical assaults. Rather than casting emotional dimensions as ancillary to a narrowly delimited set of sexual and physical assaults, this article proposes that efforts to counter emotional maltreatment become the centerpiece of efforts to understand adolescents' violent relationships; that it become central in the design of policies aimed to foster adolescent development; and that no existing legal rules or policy considerations prevent further recognition of adolescents' legal right to protection from emotional maltreatment. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.