DANVERS – Jessica Hollander was raped at age 16 while on a date with a boy she trusted as her best friend.The incident left her stunned, violated and misunderstood by her high school classmates, some who did not share her sense of outrage. “I felt totally betrayed,” Hollander told a receptive audience Thursday at North Shore Community College during a conference on teen dating violence, sponsored by the office of Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett.Hollander has wrestled with the emotional trauma and made awareness of teen violence the central focus of her life, working for a Boston-based organization, Casa Myrna Vasquez, that helps victims of abuse, and lecturing on the subject to whoever will listen – teenagers, schoolteachers, social workers, healthcare experts, guidance counselors and law enforcement officers.”I knew if it could happen to me it was happening to others,” she said, an epiphany that became all too evident as she scoured the statistics.A recent survey by the Boulder Valley School District found that 1 in 5 high school girls reported having been forced to have sexual intercourse in a dating relationship, a 20-percent rate that parallels the national average. According to Hollander, 1 in 3 girls in Massachusetts, or 33 percent, will experience teen dating violence before high school graduation.”People find it a very uncomfortable subject so it doesn’t get talked about, but the dialogue has started again,” she said, noting only 3 percent of high school girls reported sexual abuse to the authorities, while 61 percent told only friends. Another 30 percent kept silent.”Statistics are important, but they are abstract. They are only numbers,” she said. “The stories are important.”The conference featured two videos produced by Liz Claiborne, Inc., the women’s clothier, that demonstrated through interviews with survivors how teen dating violence can occur. The girls on screen talked candidly about how friends abandoned them during their hour of need, admonishing them for contacting the police. They were forced to hide or seek protection, change schools and social circles, and literally start new lives.The stories had a common thread, an abusive relationship in which the girls were degraded and controlled. They were coerced into wearing certain types of clothing or hairstyles that pleased the abuser, boys who constantly monitored their whereabouts through emails, cell phone calls, beepers and text messaging. There was a price to pay for not keeping in touch as ordered.In at least one case where the violence was more psychological than physical, the girl’s friends suggested she make nothing of it, and the victim herself did not recognize the situation as abusive. She assumed a loud daily argument was normal, based on Hollywood versions of perfectly passionate relationships and the typical behavior in many homes.Hollander blames the media and a complacent society for not taking teen dating violence seriously. As she put it, the most romantic story of all time is Romeo & Juliet, teenagers forbidden by their parents to date, with the resultant violence. Her point: Teens forced to keep secret their relationship are far less likely to report abuse should it occur.”These teens are often disconnected from supportive adult relationships,” she said, stressing the need for parents to pay attention, listen, look for warning signs, and express concern about certain behaviors but not criticize the teenager.The warning signs can range from anxiety and an evident fear of not remaining in touch with the abuser to lackluster academic performance, mood swings, isolation, weight loss, eating disorders, vanishing friends and attempted suicide.”There’s a lot of victim blaming in our society,” said Hollander. “People ask, ‘if she’s being abused, why does she stay?’ But it’s not that simple.”Blaming the victim isn’t healthy or productive. Besides, abuse comes in many forms – physical, verbal, mental, sexual, cultural.”Abuse is a pa