Seleven years old: it is the time it took Emanuela Castaldo before escaping her husband’s violence and securing herself and her three children. They often ask her: “Why did you put up with so much?”. «It’s difficult to explain» she tells us. «At the beginning our story seems like a fairy tale and I fall madly in love». Then he asks her to leave Rome, to be close to her. She does. Then he forces her to quit her job. She does. The dream begins to creak in the face of a slap. «Don’t forget the first one, his face is swollen, but his soul is bleeding inside. You feel betrayed by the person who said: “I’ll take care of you”.
It’s only the beginning. This is followed by broken furniture, kicks in the back, trips to the emergency room: “I fell.” Every day it’s worse. «I didn’t understand it immediately, but little or nothing passes from a slap to the destruction of who you are. You start hiding things to avoid arguments. You take the blame even when you haven’t done anything. You let yourself be convinced that you’re wrong, that after all “if he hits you it’s to make you understand what’s right”. In the meantime he takes everything, the money as well as the sex. Your dignity. The hope. And in the end you don’t care about yourself anymore.” He trembles thinking back to those moments. Even though she sees everything more clearly now, she can’t rest. «Who can understand a woman who, after being beaten, begs to be forgiven? No one, if you have not experienced domestic violence, understands and forgives you. To those who judge or pity me, I respond like this: there are ways of loving sick people. It just happens.” And, she adds, «maybe I immediately and kept quiet so I could tell my children that they had a happy family. For the illusion of having a home, of feeling loved.”
“I am free, today I breathe”
Now that the trial against her ex is over, Emanuela has written a book, The thoughts of a barefoot woman, in bookstores for a few weeks. Also tell us when four years ago he attempted suicide. She was saved by her daughter, who intervened in time. That was the point of no return. “I promised her, who was 11 years old, and her other two children, aged six and four, that we would leave.” It was like this. “The fear of dying gives you the push to drive down the road with the headlights off, to get on a bus towards the station to catch any train.” While they wait at the platform, however, something happens that changes their life trajectory forever. «A policewoman notices us, understands everything, approaches us and says: “Ma’am, come on, we’ll protect you from now on“. Emanuela is accompanied to file a complaint and then all four are escorted to Casa Lorena, anti-violence center and shelter for abused women in Casal di Principe (Caserta).
For five months, welcomed and supported by the specialized operators of the EVA social cooperative, he cries and screams, giving vent to the pain of 16 long years. «I threw all the pieces of my life on the table, I put them back in order, to understand that it wasn’t me who made the mistake». He reconstructs his biography: «Even my father said that he was jealous of me. That was the only love I had known.” He asks his children for forgiveness: «I didn’t notice, I didn’t want to see their suffering. I defended an image of a happy family beyond all evidence.” TO Casa Lorena begins a new life. Today Emanuela is 45 years old, she works, her children are more serene. But it wasn’t easy, not even the “afterwards”. «I had to defend myself from everyone, from him, from the lawyers, from the prosecutors, from the state, from the social workers». When he can, he brings his experience to other women: “To say that if I did it, you can do it too.”
Violence against women, few go away at the first slap
During 2022 there are more than 26 thousand women have started a journey out of violence with the help of anti-violence centresto. They are mainly between 30 and 49 years old, many are mothers. 61.3 percent have a medium-high education (a high school diploma, a degree – like Emanuela – or a doctorate) and more than 50 work. Yet 60 percent are not economically independentAnd. There are very few women who walked away at the first slap. Istat says so in the report released in November: “In most cases, more than five years have passed since the first episodes of violence.” Before, they lived every day on the edge of an abyss, they endured the crescendo of humiliations, domestic oppression, public bullying. The fists. Some almost died. From the outside, these five years seem like a long time. But from the outside, it is easy to judge.
«Why are women unable to reject violence when they recognize it? What makes us believe we can change, welcome and tame the threat?”. This is the question that Concita De Gregorio asked herself in a 2008 book, Malamore (Einaudi), which seems to be written now. «Is all this suffering love? It is not; it’s a bad love, weed that grows in the pots of our balconies” he wrote. Sometimes, however, “eradicating it costs more than keeping it”. It still applies. But something is changing. «Today’s girls are quicker to recognize the signs of violence, also the psychological one; they do not feel obliged to endure, tolerate, suffer; they have more tools to escape dangerous dynamics” underlines Arianna Gentili, manager of 1522, the toll-free number (active 24 hours a day and in six languages), which welcomes requests for help from victims of violence and stalking. «The more adult ones, their mothers, on the contrary, were educated to tolerate oppressionto bear the burden of violence. There is a habit in them, a tolerance of violence that is the scariest thing of all». «With those who have less awareness, group work is of great help» explains Concetta Schiavone, coordinator of the Campania anti-violence centers managed by the EVA cooperative «Women who have already completed a path tell their experience to others, who can thus reflect yourself, feel welcomed, understood and never judged.”
The fear of losing children
Recognizing, curbing and moving away from violence is an uphill journey, never linear, made up of steps forward and then backwards. «You are afraid of opening the door, terrified of not knowing where to go, what to do, that they might take your children away from you. You are afraid of not making it, of not being able to resist, of not having the strength to look at the sun because the light is too strong » says Emanuela. «It takes years to rebalance from “I am not” to “I am”, from “I don’t count” to “I count”, from “I don’t exist” to “I exist”».
In a 2017 book, It’s not a destiny (Donzelli), Lella Palladino, sociologist, founder of the EVA cooperative, and vice-president of the foundation One None One Hundred Thousand tells the emotions that women experienced before arriving to ask for help. Many have been isolated, or criticized for not reacting sooner; or for reacting too quickly. Others gripped by feelings of guilt due to prejudices and social conditioning. “The mandate to keep the family together is too strong, the pressures of the world out there are too devastating.”
Why women victims of violence give “another chance”
And then there is another aspect that should not be underestimated: although lIn half of the cases, the perpetrator of the violence is the woman’s partner (in 53 percent) or an ex (in 25 percent), some resist in the hope of recovering serenity with the man they lived with. «Feelings, even in the face of abuse and violence, can weaken, or become more aware, but they hardly melt like snow in the sun» clarifies Palladino. Whether it is for love or for social conditioning, «it happens that the woman returns home convinced that she has to give “another chance”.“to that man who had shown himself repentant, who had let her know how much he missed her, how much he couldn’t survive without her and their children.” They almost always return, more devastated by the violence but more convinced of their decision.
A miniseries available on Netflix shows this very well, Maid: tells the story of a young mother fleeing a violent relationship (she too is welcomed into a shelter), as she struggles to build a better future for herself and her daughter. Children, well, are a delicate matteror. «Very often the suffering of children is the insurmountable limit, the spring that pushes them out of the home and acts as a driving force for the activation of the entire process» observes Schiavone. «Other times it is to preserve a father for their children that women remain and resist in a context that is harmful to their freedom and dignity. To defend that family image that continues to be strenuously defended beyond all evidence».
As in There’s still tomorrow
«After the femicide of Giulia Cecchettin», explains Gentili, «the requests for help in 1522 doubled». The ones who call are women involved in violence, but there are also many who ask for help because they are worried about a friend. «Many mothers also call, worried about their daughters’ visits. But the surprising thing is that there are many daughters who ask for help to encourage their mothers to free themselves from relationships that are no longer tolerable».
In this sense, the dialogue between the mother and daughter in Paola Cortellesi’s film is archetypal. There’s still tomorrow. At a certain point Delia (played by the director herself) is warning her daughter Marcella against a marriage that promises to be toxic and tells her this phrase: “But you have time”. But the young woman replies “You too, ma(mma)”.
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