Father remembers daughter in lecture
Courtney Boyle
News Writer
After the death of his 18-year-old daughter, Lisa, to dating violence, Tom Santoro brought the spirit of his daughter alive Monday night in his "Dear Lisa" presentation by stressing the importance of trust and respect in all relationships.
After breaking up with her boyfriend of five months Lisa was tragically beaten with a baseball bat and killed after her boyfriend planned her homicide.
Santoro has now turned his energy to spreading the word about dating violence and sharing his story. He wants to make people aware by keeping Lisa's graduation wish of ending violence alive.
In doing so, Santoro has made presentations in over 200 high schools and colleges sharing his story and a video he put together with clips of Lisa and her graduation speech.
"My source of strength is the video of Lisa and knowing her dad is carrying out her vision, and my faith," Santoro said.
Before going away to college Santoro explained how Lisa ended a relationship with her boyfriend because she wanted to move on and because they just didn't click.
There was no sexual or physical abuse in the relationship at the time.
Shortly after the break-up Lisa and her boyfriend, upon his request, decided to return the letters that they had written to each other during the last five months.
Lisa did not think anything of going alone because she trusted him, something Santoro stressed as being important in a relationship. This night changed the lives of many, as Lisa never came home.
Santoro was working at the firehouse the night his daughter was killed. He came home at six and gave her a kiss and soon returned to work. An hour after Lisa's curfew she was still not home and her mother called her father.
When he got home and Lisa still was not there he called the house where she was supposed to be only to receive an answering machine.
"I went to the house and saw the police cars and the ambulance. I knew my daughter was dead. I knew because of my instinct as a fireman and a dad," Santoro said.
Between the time Santoro was called and had gotten to the sight of his daughters murder, her murderer had left the scene and gone home to tell his stepfather that he had just killed his ex-girlfriend and washed her blood all over his body.
Santoro did not see him until the trial began in which he pleaded not guilty. However, after a 21-month trial he was found guilty and sentenced to 75 years in prison because it was a premeditated homicide.
Santoro describes the reasoning behind the homicide as being the familiar, "If I can't have her no one can" way of thinking. This was the logic that ultimately changed many lives.
"He ruined his life, took Lisa's life and destroyed mine as a dad," Santoro said.
While Lisa's life ended only three weeks before she was supposed to attend the University of Iowa, her father lives on through writing in a journal to his only daughter.
He said writing allows him to talk to Lisa whenever he wants.
When his wife was later diagnosed with breast cancer it was Lisa he turned to for strength.
While telling his tragic story of the death of Lisa, Santoro also stressed the importance of knowing what dating violence is, and divides it into four categories; verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. According to Santoro anything can be abuse.
"If you don't stop when someone tells you to stop it's abuse," he said. "It doesn't have to be a slap or a punch, when your partner doesn't stop when you tell him to it's abuse."
Santoro lives for the letters he receives from the students he talks to about dating violence, something he never thought was necessary with Lisa.
"I never sat down with Lisa, we never talked about dating violence. It's something I never thought about," Santoro said. "If I had known, she might be alive today."
All News Stories for Tuesday, April 24, 2001
