IN September 2015, Emily Drouet left home to go to university. It was a big move for the 18-year-old, who’d had a relatively sheltered upbringing in Glasgow, but she seemed to settle in at Aberdeen University easily enough. In the halls of residence, she quickly became the mum of the house, cooking for all her flatmates, and from time to time, she would text her mother Fiona, sending silly photos and telling her what a good time she was having. In the words of her mother, there was so much ahead for Emily; it was the start of her adventure.

However, just a few months later, the adventure ended in the most terrible way. Unbeknownst to her family, Emily had become involved in a violent relationship with another student. For weeks, she suffered verbal, physical and psychological abuse at the hands of 21-year-old Angus Milligan. Later, Milligan would admit to choking and slapping Emily; a picture was also found on Emily’s phone showing her bruised and swollen face. At one point she talked to university staff about what she was going through, but then, in March last year, she committed suicide in her halls of residence. It was just seven months after she started university.

Twenty months on from the terrible day when she heard about her daughter’s death, Emily’s mother Fiona, who is 45, says she is still in the grip of her grief. “Losing Emily was the darkest, lowest point of our lives,” she says. “To be honest, I function. My husband functions. Neither of us is back at work yet. From the knock on the door at 1.30am that Thursday night, our lives ended and I hate every time a Thursday night comes around.” She says everything is still crystal clear about the night she heard the news. “Sometimes it feels like I’m stuck in that moment,” she says. “We walk around, but we are really just a hollow shell. We are putting one foot in front of the other and just trying to survive.”

There are several things that do keep Fiona going, she says, most importantly her husband Germain, her 11-year-old son Calvin and her 14-year-old daughter Rachel, but she has also thrown herself into campaigning for a change to the way universities and colleges deal with the subject of gender-based violence and harassment. Fiona believes the support for students like Emily is patchy at best and completely inadequate at worst and this weekend, in association with NUS Scotland, she will launch a new campaign for change. She says it helps to think that she could be doing something positive, but she’s also doing it, she says, because she knows it’s what Emily would have wanted.

The campaign, which will feature Emily’s face on posters, focuses on a number of areas, including calling for more and better training for staff and students. And to demonstrate what she sees as the flaws that need to be fixed, Fiona talks me through what happened when Emily, with her face red and injured, approached Aberdeen University for help.

“Emily was in halls so she approached resident assistants,” says Fiona. “Now, they don’t receive any training or very basic training so although they suspected abuse, they didn’t take things any further. There was no procedure in place. There was nothing. They say they offered support but we are still unsure about what that support is, and what action was taken. The answer is none. They were aware of her situation but nothing happened.”

The university takes a different view. When Emily contacted them the week before her death, the university says she denied that any abuse had taken place and insisted that she did not want action taken. The university says, at that point, it had to respect her wishes as part of trying to build up a trusting relationship with her. The aim, they say, was to respect her wishes while trying to encourage her to keep talking.

Fiona Drouet believes that’s not good enough. “If a student does approach a member of staff, what we would hope takes place is a thorough risk assessment,” she says. “What should have happened is they should have said: ‘Emily, we’ve seen your face, we know you’ve been assaulted – we can’t un-see that.’ Confidentiality is not sacrosanct – if somebody is in danger, you are allowed to break it or investigate it.”

What Fiona would like to see is more training, with the aim of ensuring that all staff who come into contact with students – lecturers, security staff, cleaners, whoever – understand what they should do to help. One particular idea she has developed is a support card, which would be the same size as a security pass and would include the basics on how to help students. Staff could carry it with them.

But it is not just about the staff or even universities. For a start, Fiona would also like to see much more information for students so they know what to do if they suspect a friend is being abused. Fiona recognises that it can be a tricky situation. Imagine this: a friend approaches you and tells you that her boyfriend has slapped her. What do you do? Do you go to the authorities? Do you encourage your friend to do something themselves?

“It’s about making an informed decision,” says Fiona. “OK, you might be fearful you are interfering in a relationship, you might be afraid that your friend is going to be upset with you, but look at what happened to Emily. What you should do is contact Women’s Aid or speak to student support and ask them to help you. This is where it’s all unclear. If you go to student support and say you are concerned about one of your friends, they should be trained to help you. And as long as it’s a hushed up subject and people won’t talk about it, it’s not helping anybody. I fear that we are living in a culture where we accept things, that we are too tolerant.”

In particular, Fiona is concerned that young men and women are too tolerant of abusive relationships and need to be educated about what is healthy and what isn’t. In Emily’s case, Fiona says they did talk about friendships and boys but that Emily was relatively innocent when she went to university. “I wasn’t in a rush to say to her to be this big mature girl because I think kids are pushed too quickly,” she says.

As for the situation with Angus Milligan, Emily had not spoken to her mother about it, although some of her friends were aware of some of what was going on. “Her friends knew what was happening but they didn’t recognise it for what it was,” she says. “When she was talking about her sex life, they thought ‘is this normal?’ He was an older boy and they were all sexually inexperienced and they thought: maybe this is normal. That comes back to education. There needs to be prevention from a young age. What is driving boys to do this?”

Fiona believes a large part of the problem is a misogynistic culture. “I think there is a large misogynistic culture – promising their girlfriends as sexual favours to their friends and things. The misogyny is shocking. Every girl I’ve spoken to has said that is really prominent in universities.”

In fact, one NUS survey suggests that one in four female students have experienced unwanted sexual behaviour and Fiona believes that, far from improving, the situation is getting worse. “I think it’s worse because there is this whole culture of violent porn online, and some television programmes promote women as sexual objects. Also 50 Shades of Grey. It’s all promoting loveless relationships. No respect. It’s all gone quite dark.”

What Fiona would like to see is more parents having conversations with their daughters about how to protect themselves but also with their sons about how to be in a relationship, although the main focus of the new campaign is training on campus, which Aberdeen University say they support.

“We offer our wholehearted support to campaigns that draw attention to the serious issue of domestic violence and help to keep more people safe,” said a spokesperson. He added that the university offers a range of services aimed at encouraging students to report problems and that the university is engaging with experts on domestic violence to consider what further guidance it can give to staff and students to support anyone in an abusive relationship.

Fiona’s view is that the university is in denial and the campaign goes on. She admits that, partly, it is about seeking change but that partly, too, the campaign is a form of therapy for her. It is a way, she says, to cope with what she sees as a lack of change on campus but also what she sees as the lenient approach to Milligan – when he appeared in court, he pleaded guilty to three charges of assaulting Emily and was sentenced to community service.

For Fiona, the campaign is also a kind of compulsion. “We felt this desperation,” she says. “We felt like we would be leaving girls vulnerable if we knew the dangers but weren’t talking about them. Now that we are able to do that, we think: OK, we are making progress. We are bringing this to light – there are no excuses for this to happen again.”