USD Magazine Summer 2014

t was the kind of attention that really made a girl feel special. He cared, right from the start. He cared about what she was wearing. He cared about where she was going. He cared because he was afraid of losing her, and she fell hard and fast. “He needed me,” recalls Jessica Yaffa ’98. “He thought I was beautiful. For a girl with low self-esteem, it was intoxicating.” In retrospect, the signs were all there, but at the time, Yaffa, then a high-school senior, thought it was true love. “My parents didn’t like him because they would hear us arguing, but I worked really hard to protect the relationship.” TORERO NOTES I

Finding light in the aftermath of domestic abuse by Julene Snyder [ s a l v a t i o n ] INDEPENDENCE DAY

watchful eye of her boyfriend, who had grown even more controlling. “Finally, one night I decided to hang out with my roommates and watch some movies. I called and told him I had a bad head- ache, and I’d see him in the morning. I knew he wasn’t going to like it.” That was an understatement. He came and got her, causing an ugly scene. “Once we got to his house, he hit me over and over again.” The next morning, she woke up determined to get out. He was just as sure she should stay: “He said he was so sorry, it had never happened before, he’d been drinking, he was sobbing.” For months, he was on his

Nonetheless, her parents made it known that when it came time for college, she would be leaving San Diego, largely to break up the couple’s unhealthy bond. “I fought it and fought it, and went to the closest school to San Diego that I could get to, which was Whittier College,” she recalls. “But I didn’t connect with the school, and begged and pleaded to come back to San Diego.” Her sophomore year, Yaffa’s parents said she could go to USD, so long as she lived on campus. “They wanted me to have the total college experi- ence.” It was a great sentiment, but in truth, she spent every moment not in class under the

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