Abuse. Whether emotional, verbal, physical or control, it’s real and it’s alive on college campuses. Tom Santoro spoke to students Tuesday in his “Dear Lisa” presentation showing them how to recognize patterns of abuse, escalation and incidents in dangerous relationships.

Santoro’s daughter, Lisa, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend the summer before her first year in college. Lisa had broken up with her boyfriend a few months earlier and was happily dating someone new.

She agreed to meet her ex-boyfriend one night to exchange some letters he had written her. Around 1 a.m. Lisa had not returned home and Santoro’s wife began to worry. She called her husband. Santoro was on his shift at the fire station, but he immediately drove to Lisa’s ex-boyfriend’s home. When he arrived at the scene, it was a father’s worst nightmare: Lisa’s boyfriend had murdered her with a baseball bat.

“Our daughter isn’t coming home,” Santoro had to tell the family.

Her murderer is now spending 75 years behind bars.

The father brought the audience to tears as he read letters he has written weekly since her death. All begin, “Dear Lisa.” He also showed an emotional video of his daughter’s life. The video ended with a quote from Lisa’s speech to her peers at her graduation ceremony: “Some day innocent people will no longer have to know the pain and suffering violence brings.”

Unfortunately, Lisa never saw that dream come true. Now her father’s mission is to make that dream a reality. Since her death, Santoro has devoted his life to educating high school and college students on violence in relationships.

“Violence doesn’t start with a slap or a punch, but with control and verbal abuse,” Santoro said. “Anytime someone says ‘no’ and the other person doesn’t listen, it is abuse. Verbal abuse is any degrading or negative comment made to a partner.”

According to Santoro, verbal abuse can be negative comments from a partner about how you wear your hair, your weight – even the clothing you wear. Emotional abuse follows when the victim can no longer see past the comments and believes them to be true. Sometimes a partner will try to control the woman, telling her where she can go or who she can talk to. As a girl learns to accept the control and verbal abuse, she places herself in a situation to accept other violence as well.

“It scares me to think of how many people I know in unhealthy relationships,” said sophomore corporate communications and public affairs major Betsy Killough. “I didn’t know that such small things like comments or body language could lead to serious physical and emotional abuse.”

This emotional abuse leads to physical abuse and a cycle of violence. The cycle of violence is the build-up of emotions, the tension, the explosion and then the apology. Once a person is physically abusive to a partner, it becomes easier for that type of action to happen again. Women believe that an act of violence against them is an isolated occurrence and it won’t happen again, but that is false. On average, a woman will return seven times to an abusive relationship.

Santoro used a hypothetical story to prove a frightening point to the audience. He asked the audience, the majority of which were women, to picture themselves in this situation: A woman goes on a date with an extremely good-looking guy named Tony. He gets angry on the date and he hits her. He then asked the audience how many women would go out with him again. Not one woman raised her hand.

Next, Santoro described a different situation. Suppose this woman had been dating Tony for five months. Tony had been the perfect boyfriend, and the woman loved him. He was polite, always brought flowers, and never once abused her. Tony was sometimes a little jealous, but that’s expected. One time, after a very stressful day, Tony explodes and hits his girlfriend. Again, Santoro asked the audience if they would continue dating him. Forty percent of the women in the audience raised their hands.

Of girls in abusive relationships, 75 percent will remain in the relationship, and the women blame it on themselves.

Santoro placed emphasis on the necessities of a healthy relationship: respect and trust. He hopes that partners will have respect for one another, but also respect for themselves.

“The one thing I want girls at SMU to know is that it is not their fault, they do not have to put up with it, and that there is help,” said Dr. Courtney Aberle, the coordinator of women’s programs at SMU.

If you or a friend is in an abusive relationship and want help, contact the Women’s Center at (214) 768-4792.