Recently, Fox News had a guest who does educational work on teen violence. This guest is a high-profile artist many teens would have on their iPods.

Fox played the newly released video found on dosomething.org that reenacts the alleged attack by Chris Brown on singer and girlfriend Rihanna (Robyn Fenty), reported in early February. These reports say police were called just hours before Rihanna and Brown were scheduled to perform at the Grammy Awards where both had received nominations.

Responding to questions the host asked about her response to the attack, the guest repeatedly said, “I wasn’t there, you weren’t there, we weren’t there, so we don’t really know.” She said she was on the show to raise awareness about this kind of violence, but would not offer her opinion on the attack and continued to decline to comment saying, “We weren’t there, we don’t know what happened.”

I was shocked and sent an email to the show to express my dismay over the confusion this message was sending. The message she said she was trying to get out was one of awareness. However, the message that came across is a dangerous message that encourages silence. Her refusal to openly dialogue about the violent event because she wasn’t there wasn’t lost on the host, who commented that one didn’t have to be there to see that the singer’s face looked worse than many boxers emerging from rounds in the ring!

Boston news reported that a survey conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission on the this dating violence incident revealed that nearly half of Boston youths surveyed said she was “responsible” for what happened, while 52 percent said they were both to blame. Clearly, we need to raise awareness and education that begins with calling the attack what it was: abuse. We need to teach that nothing can justify abuse and that there is nothing a person can do to “be at fault” and therefore be responsible for being assaulted.

It does not help when a high-profile figure tells teens that it’s not appropriate to call something wrong, even if you believe it is, if you weren’t there to see it or if you don’t know what caused it.

We need to be able to confront the subject of abuse or suspected abuse openly within our families, neighborhoods, churches, schools, and even in the news. If we don’t talk about it because “we weren’t there, we didn’t see, or we don’t know what really went on,” this insinuates that there may be valid reasons for it. Silence and an unwillingness to get involved protect the abuser and imprison the victim.

The words and language we use when we talk about abuse send important messages to those listening to us, so we have to be very clear in our convictions and careful about how we communicate that—so we don’t send mixed messages.