“Stand tomorrow it’s me, if I don’t come back tomorrow, mother, destroy everything. If tomorrow it’s my turn, I want to be the last”. Many have shared the words of the text in recent days Cristina Torres Caceres. Starting with Elena, Giulia Cecchettin’s sister. She shared them too, in a post on Instagram dedicated to violence against women, even the State Police. «Remember, if #thisisnotlove you are not alone. Together for the elimination of gender violence.”
Violence against women, the post by the State Police has a boomerang effect. «You are the ones who didn’t believe it»
A post that was certainly intended to support the victims and women who are demonstrating and shouting their indignation in the streets and on social networks in recent days. A post that sparked an uproar, and that same indignation. Against them, accused, too many times, of not believing anyone who reported abuse, whether victim or witness. It’s a Pandora’s box that opens: there are many comments of the same sign: women who remember the time that their aunt, mother, friend or they themselves asked for help and were not listened to. The boomerang effect is incredible.
«QWhen at 13 my mother left me a letter saying she was going to commit suicide, I called you, you told me it was nothing and that she would return. You were my dad’s friends and you literally covered for him. I have lost faith forever.” «But did you make fun of me when I said that they were following me and harassing me at home? As I cried in fear of going down with my dogs for weeks! You told me to dress like a boy!”
«You told me “Miss, it’s normal to argue”»
There are so many comments, the comment space turns into a wall of tears and anger. “Oh this man abused you for three years, child? We can’t do anything until we see it with our eyes. How about you get abused one more time and then we show up in the process?” I was 6 years old.” «From you I was told “Miss, it’s normal to argue”. It wasn’t normal, and it was before your eyes.”
«I was told by you that on the way home to university it is normal to find someone masturbating while looking at me. I showed you the video, the subject and the car. Guess what? I was alone on the way home to university, where were you?”
«When I was returning home alone in the middle of the night you stopped me at a checkpoint, not to ask for my documents, but to ask me what I was doing alone, give me heartfelt compliments and propose to stay there with you. I was obviously terrified and you had a laugh and then I was able to leave.” Reports of violence against women: what purpose do they serve if the police underestimate
«While my father was beating my mother you remained behind the front door and you never intervened, “it stopped after a while”»
«One night, it was 2 in the morning, I called to warn of a couple in the car near my house, he was beating her, you replied “eh ma’am, but now that we arrive he has already killed her”! You never came, they left arguing in the car! Who knows what happened to her!!!!”
But there are also those who make an appointment: «See you on the 25th in the squares then. We will be the ones demonstrating, you will be the ones dressed in riot gear.”
Demonstrating for Giulia Cecchettin, in Bologna, on November 22 (Photo by Max Cavallari/Getty Images)
The failure of the police to intervene on the night of Giulia’s kidnapping
It detonates the women’s anger, and it detonates even more strongly as a crime for hit-and-run looms for the failure to intervene by the Carabinieri patrols on the night of Giulia Cecchettin’s kidnapping. There was no police inspection in Vigonovo at night despite this a witness called 112 to report the attack in the parking lot a few meters from the girl’s house. The phone call, which reached the operators at 11.18pm, “talked about a dispute between two people who had already gotten back into the car and left” explain the police, with the witness who “was unable to write down the license plate”. But that night, the police justify themselves, “there were other interventions underway by the patrols”. Furthermore, no missing person report had been filed, and certainly no one imagined that Giulia Cecchettin and Filippo Turetta were inside that car. Nobody imagined what epilogue their story, and her life, would have.
Violence against women, training of operators essential
But this is precisely the problem: no one ever imagines, no one imagines enough. It is very clear that the training of operators to whom victims can choose to report is a fundamental issue. So that no one ever underestimates, plays down and sends home, alone, a woman who had enough courage to say “Enough”.
The issue is addressed in article 6 of the Law on violence against women, the Rocella bill, approved on Wednesday. We talk about the predisposition, on the part of thedelegated political authority for equal opportunitiesof specific ones national guidelines. The goal is guide the training of operators who, for various reasons, come into contact with women victims of violence. Will it be enough?
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