Via Piacenza 14, a threshold that separates the noise of the Porta Romana area from a silence that is protection, listening, relationship, rebirth. This is where the headquarters are located Shelter for Battered Women in Milan, CADMI, the first Anti-Violence Center to open in Italy, exactly 40 years agodevelopment of a switchboard that had begun to collect voices of women abused by their husbands when mistreatment was hastily downgraded to domestic disputes. Thousands of stories have passed through these rooms: almost 40 thousand women in difficulty helped free of charge through listening, welcoming, legal advice, professional orientation; 800 of those in danger were welcomed into the ten shelter homes, i.e. secret apartments where the persecutors will never be able to reach.
The first 40 years of CADMI: 40 thousand women helped
On April 16, at Palazzo Marino, the 40 years of the Home for Battered Women in Milan will be retraced through the transformations generated in the lives of women and in society: a human and political revolution, born within the Italian Women’s Union (Udi), who tells iO Donna today about Manuela Ulivi, founder and president of CADMI, civil lawyer, an energy that never seems to be consumed.
In a glittering, hedonistic Milan, launched towards the records of fashion and design, in 1986 here was a break, a frontier place that forced us to look at what was happening inside the homes.
It was thought that, after the great era of rights in the Seventies, culture and customs had changed and women’s freedoms had been acquired and respected. In Milan, a Udi desk, staffed by very attentive civil lawyers, received women who asked for information on divorce and family law. The lawyers perceived from what they heard – sentences that alluded to unclear behavior by their husbands, rather than requests for explanations on what abuse was – that something wasn’t right. Some, within the Udi, sensed the possibility that there was also violence. And they set up a switchboard available to anyone who wanted to report and receive help. Several called: some, clearly mistreated, refused this word. To avoid defining them as victims or mistreated, we invented the term “women in a state of temporary distress”. But when the Center was officially born as it still is today, we called it the Home for Abused Women of Milan. Some historical feminists had told us: name violence for what it is, so it shows.
Violence against women changing shape
How has violence changed in these forty years?
It has changed in its forms, not in the dynamics that move it, which has remained the same: the desire to keep a woman in a subordinate position. After that, today technology allows new and extremely powerful aggressive, manipulative and blackmail tools that are once again changing the forms of expression of violence.
And women? Have the women who ask you for help today changed?
They react much sooner, and this is a great success. In the nineties, when they came to us, they had a long history of violence behind them, even 20, 30 years. They submitted and remained silent: they deluded themselves that he would stop, they endured the worst in the name of the fact that he was the father of their children. In any case, if there are children, the situation is still very complex and it becomes difficult to walk away. In the courts we hear heartbreaking and incredible stories of young children forced to live with abusive fathers. We have seen that many violent men tend to exploit their being a father. Shared custody, in this respect, has not done women with partners like this a good service, because it has allowed these men, through the demand to see their children, to control them. Only since 2023 has the Cartabia reform made it possible to distinguish separation with custody, so to speak, of an ordinary nature from that, however, with allegations of violence. It all depends on how the law is applied, of course, but if there is a separation with allegations of violence the times are now shorter, the attention is greater, exclusive custody is decided. In short, there are aspects of the phenomenon that are changing for the better.
CADMI is open in via Piacenza 14, in Milan, from 10am to 6pm from Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm on Friday. (@instagram)
Listening, above all
Do you have a specific discipline for listening to a woman who asks you for help?
Absolutely yes. It involves believing her, never judging her, not even with a look, listening to her carefully, guaranteeing her that everything you do will be shared with her. The heart of the method is the relationship between women, starting from empathy, understood not only in its human meaning: for us, empathizing also means understanding what can actually be done with her and for her and what cannot. It also means accepting that you return to the violent person, when he tells you: I can’t take this step with you, I’m going back to him.
From what she has seen in recent years, why doesn’t a woman leave a man who hurts her so much?
Because he loves it. Or because he scares her. And also because there are children. But also because she is ashamed to let it be known that she is being beaten or because she is afraid of being judged if she breaks the marriage. There are many reasons, including the fact that you may not believe that the man you love is violent. The thought is: there’s no way he could do this to me. This inertia triggers a spiral that ends up being increasingly brutal.
After forty years and thousands of stories, what is the metamorphosis of women that excites you the most?
I am struck by all those who at the beginning seem to have no chance. They rely on you desperately and you ask yourself: but how can I help this woman? What do I tell her? How do we do it? Because maybe she has three children, she has no money, she has no job, no one to lend her a hand. Then little by little you build things with her, you help her to put her life in motion, to ask for separation, to regain her self-respect and dignity, to think of herself in a dimension of freedom. What a beauty when they bloom again! I have one in mind. He comes to us in pajamas and slippers because he is running away, at night, from an absurd, very complicated situation. We welcomed her into a shelter, together with her four children, and began to build a new life project together. After four months, she manages to return with her children to her home – from which he had to leave because we obtained a precautionary measure – and resumes her work thanks to her colleagues who help her. The day I saw her again she was smiling, and I was wondering: Oh God, is it her? She was beautiful.
When men want their victims back
Has it ever happened that men came to CADMI to take back their wives?
And why not? We had men patrolling. We are ready for anything. But do you keep the door closed or open? Door closed, of course. We could find them there at any moment, and instead we have to work safely and calmly. In any case, nothing particularly worrying ever happened. Anyone who comes to the center finds at least ten women on the move, so even these men have a little bit of fear.
Do you believe that a man who mistreats can be recovered or not?
Not much. These are men so imbued with superiority towards women that it is very difficult for them to change. They may be the most ignorant and mediocre men, but you are a woman and therefore you are less than them. I have seen men in front of the judges defend themselves with incredible naturalness: “And what is it? I just gave her a slap!”.
When CADMI was born forty years ago, was it already clear that violence is not a fit, but the result of specific cultural models?
Violence is never a fit, never, ever: there are our documents from that era which already clearly say how much violence is the product of patriarchal culture.
Is a femicide always premeditated?
Always. The femicide is someone who really wants that woman to no longer exist, because she has done things that he does not accept.
The future of CADMI: talking about violence in schools
What is the future of CADMI? Tell us about a project.
Implement our relationship with schools, teachers and students who we already know need to address the issue of violence. Talk about it in a non-trivial or superficial way. Let us all get involved, because we are involved in a system that carries seeds of violence that we do not always see.
How do you keep such a structured and mature creature like the CADMI viable without it becoming a bureaucracy?
He asked me a good question. We keep ourselves vital because we never take the things we do for granted and we continually discuss them. Because we always bring to light what’s wrong. Because we regularly do supervision with an expert: keeping all that desperation on your soul can be draining. But above all because we are not just a service, we are politics: we want to change, we want to change our lives and we help women to change theirs.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
