In recent days there has been much debate about the use of the word cruelty.
I have read a lot about it and tried to find out why, according to many, I should not have been so indignant, when in the sentence of the murder of Giulia Cecchettin the aggravating circumstance of cruelty was excluded.
In the legal field, cruelty exists when… “the perpetrator of the crime inflicts on the victim additional suffering beyond that necessary for the commission of the crime, demonstrating a particularly reprehensible attitude”…
I have read some explanations (many times, several times) and even if I understood them in “legal jargon” I confess that I just can’t help but feel a little “embittered” still.
The cruelty took place even before the killer physically acted against his victim: long before the tragedy occurred, he wrote her hundreds of messages to try to deprive her of her freedom, trying to prevent her from having friends and going out with them, he threatened to kill himself to feed her sense of guilt, he made lists of materials necessary to carry out his plan (that of making her disappear from the world forever) and finally he took advantage of the fact that she was feeling sorry for him so much as to grant him what we later know was their last meeting. If cruelty is not only physical, why can’t we talk about psychological cruelty?
And why, if legal cruelty does not have the same meaning as cruelty as we understand it in the Italian language, then we cannot express in other ways what the law deems or not to be an aggravating circumstance?
Words are not always necessary but when they are used they have their weight and in some cases the weight is enormous!
I think back to many situations in which some women have reported psychological violence by some men (often their exes); and if I remember correctly many of these situations have then had a tragic epilogue.
Is it still considered “normal” that if I decide to separate from a man, he can bombard me with phone calls, show up outside my house, follow me when I go out with my friends to check up on me, send me messages where he seriously offends me because the mere thought of me seeing someone else drives him crazy, tell me that if I don’t get back with him he’ll kill himself or, even worse, tell me that sooner or later he’ll be the one to kill me!?
Is all this given the right weight when a woman has the courage to report?
Then, it must be said … women often convince themselves that it is normal, that “she speaks like this because she is suffering a lot, sooner or later she will stop”!
Some women, however, do not have the strength to rebel against all this on their own, they remain stuck because the sense of guilt blocks them, or because they ally themselves in an unhealthy way within some relationships. Some need the support of people who pick up on certain signals and worry about them, so much so that they say “IT IS NOT NORMAL, THIS IS NOT OK”
Maybe if we started talking about invisible violence, where hands or weapons are not used, there would still be no need to be indignant about the concept of cruelty and, more importantly, we could avoid fewer tragic endings. Maybe.
Today, April 25, we celebrate the day of Liberation from Nazi occupation and fascism, I would have liked to write something on the theme of Freedom and thinking about this word my thoughts kept returning to Giulia and all the women like her who have been deprived of it forever.
I was thinking about the main achievements of women over the years: the right to vote, access to education and work, gender equality and sexual freedom.
At a legal level, everything is written. But how much further we still have to go before women really have the same rights at a social and cultural level.
When will a woman be able to go to a job interview without being asked if she wants to have children one day, when will a woman not be considered a bad girl if she is sexually free, when will a woman be able to leave a man without risking being yet another victim of violence?
I hope for a day where we can also celebrate this day of Liberation. Because then we could say that we have gone beyond a certain dominant culture; a culture that makes the mind sick and poisons it.
There is a need to change our thinking.
Happy Liberation to everyone.
Valeria Verna
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