‘Never break up alone’: Father promotes teen dating violence awareness
Amanda Steen | Herald-Standard
Dr. Gary Cuccia speaks to students at Laurel Highlands High School on behalf of the Demi Brae Cuccia Awareness Organization, a non-profit organization he set up to shed light on teenage dating violence after his daughter was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend in 2007. Gary Cuccia last spoke to his daughter on the phone 16 minutes before she died, and says he replays the conversation “every single day.”
Amanda Steen | Herald-Standard
Students at Laurel Highlands High School pick up bracelets and informative material provided by the Demi Brae Cuccia Awareness Foundation, an organization that helps shed light on teen dating violence. Dr. Gary Cuccia, father of Demi Brae Cuccia, says if the students take away one thing from the event, it should be to “never break up alone.”
Amanda Steen | Herald-Standard
Students at Laurel Highlands High School pick up bracelets and informative material provided by the Demi Brae Cuccia Awareness Foundation.
Nearly seven years after she was brutally stabbed to death by her former boyfriend, Demi Brae Cuccia continues to make an impact on the lives of young people.
“My daughter is making a difference. I’m just a messenger,” said Dr. Gary Cuccia, Demi Brae’s father.
Gary Cuccia shared his daughter’s story with Laurel Highlands High School students Thursday morning in an effort to shed light on the dangers of teen dating violence.
“It’s important for me to honor my daughter,” he said. “I’m not OK with her just being a statistic.”
Demi Brae Cuccia died in 2007 after being stabbed 16 times the day after her 16th birthday.
It was two weeks after she had broken up with her boyfriend, John Mullarkey, who had sent an excessive amount of text messages to her the day he killed her.
One message read, “Everything is more important then the guy you love…” And after finding out that she was home alone, he asked to meet her at her house.
It was there that he killed her. Mullarkey was later convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence in prison, without parole.
“I always say this is a story you see on the news. This is a story you
never think could happen to you or your family,” Gary Cuccia said. “I just want to tell you that it does happen to normal families.”
He was working at his office seeing patients on the night Demi Brae was killed. He said he had a missed call from her, and he called her back. He describes how he had a typical, five-minute phone conversation with Demi, but later learned from police that as soon as she hung up the phone, she let her ex-boyfriend into the house.
“She was excited. She just passed her driver’s permit. She was getting ready to start her junior year at Gateway High School. She was going to be a varsity cheerleader,” he said.
“I was the very last person she talked to. I play that conversation back in my head every single day.”
Cuccia said that if students take away one thing from his daughter’s story, it should be to “never break up alone.”
“If Demi had learned this message, maybe she wouldn’t have allowed this boy into the house when she was home alone,” Gary Cuccia said. “I live with the fact that I wasn’t able to save my daughter because I had no idea she was in trouble.”
According to loveisrespect.org, women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of dating violence.
Additionally, one in three teens experience some form of dating abuse, and one in three teens who have been in a relationship say they’ve been text messaged 10, 20 or 30 times an hour by a partner finding out where they are, what they’re doing or who they’re with.
“It’s never OK to strike your partner. It is never OK to control your partner,” Gary Cuccia said. “A relationship is about complimenting one another.”
Gary Cuccia said he hopes the story he shared with the students will resonate with them. Following his daughter’s murder, Gary Cuccia founded the Demi Brae Cuccia Awareness Organization, a nonprofit organization devoted to providing education and awareness to youth, parents and communities on the real dangers associated with teen dating violence and abuse.
He estimates that he’s shared his daughter’s story with 80,000 students at about 100 assemblies.
In addition to the assemblies, Cuccia was successful in seeing the passage of Act 104, which strongly recommends that curriculum on teen dating violence be taught to ninth through 12th graders in every Pennsylvania school.
Cuccia worked to establish Oct. 6 as the “Demi Brae Cuccia Awareness Day” in Pennsylvania.
His goal, however, is to make it a nationally recognized day.
“That’s not a very easy thing to do. But I’m going to fight like hell to make it happen,” he said.