Wearing a black polo shirt with “Dear Lisa” stitched in yellow across the chest, Tom Santoro stands in front of a group of 35 high school girls taking a self-defense class. The lights dim, and he starts a video chronicling the 18 years of his daughter Lisa’s life.
In July 1994 Lisa was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Since then Santoro has visited classrooms across Chicago and the suburbs and in 26 other states lecturing about the warning signs of dating violence.
Santoro has talked to as many as 2,000 students at a time, but he prefers smaller groups. He says it’s easier to reach the kids in the back–the ones who disappear in the rear of an auditorium. “I want them to realize what dating violence is,” he says. “A lot of kids have no idea–besides physical and sexual abuse, of course. But they have no idea about control and verbal abuse. Some laugh it off. Some don’t want to say anything because they don’t want to get their boyfriends upset.” A recent Massachusetts study found that one in five girls age 14 to 18 has been involved in some sort of violent dating relationship.
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Later he warns them about the wrong type of relationships, saying,
A month and a half after the breakup, after Lisa began dating someone else, her ex-boyfriend called her. He said he wanted to exchange some things they’d given each other over the months they’d been dating. Lisa agreed to meet him.
The day Lisa broke up with him he told friends he was so upset he was going to beat up the next guy he saw. And he did–a complete stranger. He also began stalking Lisa without her knowing. “His friends knew this happened,” says Santoro. “Maybe they didn’t know what he was going to do to Lisa. But they still could have called and told her.”
