Women who work up the courage to call an abuse hotline often ask a jarring question:

"How do I get him to stop hitting me?"

Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, knows the answer: "You're not going to be able to do that."

It's not that abusers are incapable of changing their behavior; they can.

But the victim of intimidation, threats, bullying, put-downs and abuse will not be the one who changes an abuser.

The recent release of a graphic video of Ray Rice, former Baltimore Ravens running back, punching his then-fiancee in the face and dragging her unconscious body out of an elevator, sparked a public outcry. Plenty of discussion on social media focused on the complicated reasons why victims choose to stay with their abusers.

There can be a sense of forgone conclusion about the abusers. If they are capable of the sort of brutal violence witnessed in the Rice video, what are the chances an abuser can learn to manage such out-of-control behavior?

"If we talked more about what to do for the Ray Rices of the world, who are the perpetrators of violence, we might get even further in the discussion," said Ruth Glenn, interim executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

The answer has high stakes: 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, according to a 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Teens and young adults face the greatest risk of violence in relationships.

Ray-Jones ran groups for perpetrators for a few years and saw a hundred men go through the treatment program. It was court-ordered treatment, twice a week for 52 weeks. There were some successes: A man said he realized he would yell at his wife and tell her if she could just keep the house clean or the kids quiet, he wouldn't get so irritated. He realized his culpability in that moment and started changing his own behavior.

She recalls another abuser, who said all the "right things" during the yearlong treatment, then said on graduation day: "I don't understand why I had to do this program. I only punched her in the mouth."

He had knocked three of his partner's teeth out, and she had needed stitches.

Edward Gondolf is one of the world's leading authorities on predicting abuse and reassault among batterers, and the former director of research at the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute. A long-term, longitudinal study by Gondolf looked at reassault rates for men who attended treatment programs. Although almost half reassaulted their partner within the four-year span, the reassault rate went down over time.

In fact, it went down substantially over time. More than 80 percent of the men had been violence-free for at least a year by the 30-month mark.

In other words, most abusers reassaulted early on. Eventually, the vast majority were violence-free for at least a year in the extended follow-up.

"Intervention does seem to matter," Gondolf said. He cautioned, however, that there was a portion of men who were violent early on and unrelenting in their abuse. "These are the horror stories that bring into question whether men can change," he said.

There is a core group of abusers who are unresponsive to change, impervious to treatment.

There's been research that tried to help identify which abusers are more likely to reoffend, but there's a basic way women can get a sense of the answer themselves: Ask yourself if you feel safe. Do you think he will hit you again? Listen to your gut. Are you living with verbal abuse, threats and intimidation?

The same can be taught to young people learning to navigate the early years of dating and relationships. If your child is dating, talk about what a healthy relationship looks like. Share the signs of possible red flags. How much is this other person trying to control you? Is he or she overly jealous, always asking a lot of questions about your whereabouts? How much time and attention does he or she want and demand from you? Do you feel listened to and respected?

Oftentimes, abuse goes unreported. What is the likelihood that abusers who never seek therapy, or are not forced to undergo treatment, will change? I asked Gondolf.

"That's an important question," he said. "And one we've somewhat neglected."

Listen to your gut.

More revealing than the nude celebrity pictures have been our reactions to the theft.

A common response -- "just don't take naked selfies" -- misses the most critical point. Digital sexual behavior is part of the dating and relationship landscape. The criminals who hacked celebrities' accounts, stole private photos, then sold or reposted them violated those women and their privacy. They also sent a loud message to everyone else: Your data is not safe.

And celebrities are hardly alone in capturing intimate moments with a phone.

The way parents talk to their children about this case lays the foundation for how upcoming generations will think about a shifting landscape of intimacy and privacy.

Several studies suggest that your child will, at some point, encounter a sexually explicit phone message. This will probably happen younger than you think. While fewer teens are having sex than in previous generations, they are more likely to use digital devices to experiment with sexuality.

Nearly a quarter (20 percent) of middle school students with text-capable cellphones admitted to receiving a sexually explicit text, according to a study published in Pediatrics in June. A 2012 study in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that one-quarter of teens said they have sexted. By college, those numbers are much higher. A 2013 study from Indiana University and Purdue University found that 80 percent of the college students surveyed had received sext messages, and nearly half, 46 percent, had sexted with pictures.

A report from the Pew Research Center released in February found that 20 percent of adults surveyed say they have received a suggestive picture, up from 15 percent two years ago.

If your child has a smartphone or is friends with someone who does, this latest news about celebrity photos merits a conversation. As evident from this and so many other cases that have been in the news, the consequences of virtual sexual behavior can have real-life impact just as damaging to lives and reputations as behavior offline.

The names involved in this particular case, however, are ones your child has likely heard; these are stars they have likely seen on television or in the movies.

When I broached the topic with my own tween daughter, she interrupted me to say that the strangest picture she's taken of herself is of her making a duck face. I was glad to hear that, but there were a few points I wanted to make clear about what had happened to actresses like Jennifer Lawrence.

I told her the basics of how the celebrities' private photos had spread. Despite a few eye rolls and "I already know," I said (again) that there are ways people can get into your phone and computer without your permission and use what they find to hurt you. We talked about ways to try to protect our privacy.

It may be easier for parents to pass judgment on celebrities who are victims of perverts and thieves. But if we want to try to protect our children from being victims -- or perpetrators -- of such crimes, we need to start those discussions from a different place. And the conversation about values needs to go a step further.

It's just as much a crime to break into someone's phone or computer and steal an image as it would be to break into their house and walk out with the china.

It's not OK for this to have happened to Lawrence because the pictures were taken in the first place.

It's not OK for those pictures to be spread around the Internet because people say she's hot.

Harassment is never a compliment.

There is a difference between what someone wants to do with another person and what they don't want to do. It's called consent.

Looking at a private picture that someone does not want you to see is a violation of that person's consent.

There's no shortage of sexually explicit photos on the Internet for those who want to view them. An image becomes more valuable when we don't want others to see it.

These may seem like heavy concepts to discuss with a child, but they can be explained in simple terms. And the younger we start talking about the various ways in which we respect another person, the longer we have to reinforce those ideas.

The best things my son brought home from school during second grade were little pink slips of paper filled out by his classmates.

The notes were often scrawled in crooked handwriting. Each one mentioned a simple thing my son had done: He helped stack the chairs after school. He lent someone his markers. He gave a friend a pencil.

His teacher at the time, Emily Bernstein, encouraged the students to jot down when they noticed a peer was "caught showing character." She handed out the notes and sometimes assigned a "secret friend" to make sure everyone was caught committing kindness at least occasionally.

The notes I often found in the bottom of his backpack were small but powerful.

His friends were affirming what I was trying to teach at home.

When it comes to teaching kindness, we often start too late and stop too young. We think once our children have mastered social graces that they no longer need direct instruction on something so basic.

We are wrong.

It can take years of practice, reinforcement and witnessing small and large gestures of grace to create considerate adults. And even then, we need reminders.

This year, I turned 40. As part of marking that milestone, I resolved at the start of the year to commit 40 random acts of kindness before my birthday. Initially, it sounded easy enough; I prefer to think of myself as a nice person. I started keeping a list as I paid tolls for those behind me, bought drive-through meals and coffee for strangers, gave away free movie tickets to those in line.

But I soon realized that I didn't want my children to see my challenge as a gimmick, nor did I want them to think the only way to be kind was to give other people stuff.

So, I started writing thank-you notes for things I would normally just appreciate silently, like a helpful concierge or a cheerful waitress. I said yes to volunteer events that I felt too tired or busy to do at the moment I was asked. I extended invitations I would normally have talked myself out of. And I didn't say a word or give a sideways glance to the woman who stole the parking spot I had waited several minutes for.

The project forced me to become more intentional about my interactions with others, regardless of how brief. And it embarrassed me to realize how often I missed these opportunities when I wasn't keeping kindness top-of-mind. So many of my efforts for others focus on the usual suspects of family members and friends.

Making that circle bigger turned out to be the best gift I've ever given myself.

Unbeknownst to me, around the same time I started my project, Kimberly Downey, a mom of twins and owner of a dance school in Orange County, California, made the same intention. She wanted to repay the world a giant kindness: One of her twins had undergone open-heart surgery last year, and she had been overwhelmed by the way friends and family took care of her family during that stressful time.

On Jan. 4, her 39th birthday, she told her twin girls, now 4, that they were going to spend the entire day spreading acts of kindness throughout their community. From 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., they took dog and cat treats to an animal shelter, handed out sand toys at the beach, mailed care packages to deployed Marines, dropped off crayons and coloring books to a children's hospital and delivered gift baskets to their local fire station.

At first, her preschoolers wanted to keep some of the treats for themselves and couldn't understand why they were giving away so many things, but they quickly caught on. They felt that intrinsic burst of happiness that we give ourselves when we give of ourselves.

They wanted to do it again the next day.

After a few months of consistently involving her children in small acts of kindness, Downey observed a change in them. They noticed when a child was all alone on a playground; they defaulted to being the ones who would reach out in those situations. I noticed a similar effect on my children near the end of my challenge. They would suggest ideas to me as we went through our normal, hectic routines.

"It's not just a holiday event," Downey said. "We need to be intentional about kindness and be consistent about it."

It led her to start a nonprofit, the Infinite Smile Project, which will look to involve children as young as 3 and their parents in paying it forward.

She wants kindness to be the new cool.

Actor Aaron Paul may have helped the cause by giving a shout-out during his Emmy acceptance speech to his wife's charity, The Kind Campaign. She and her co-founder travel to schools urging girls to stop being mean to one another.

His mention drove so much traffic to the site, it crashed.

What if everyone who has ever benefited from another person's kindness made it an urgent priority to pass it along?

We would crash so much more than a website.