We proceeded from an extremely dramatic situation, so a slight improvement data on Violence against women yes, this is good news, but accompanied by a retrospective thought that it would be difficult to worse than this. Because in Italy in 2020, just a few days after the official registration of the first quarantine which would make us abandon our old habit of locking ourselves in the house, the very home for many women and girls, from a refuge it turned into the most dangerous place in the world. The virus is outside, but the biggest fear is inside. The coldest month was May 2020 when women they were killed by men they shared quarantine with: husbands, boyfriends, companions. Quarantine, then explained analysts, psychologists and sociologists, should not be seen as the cause of violence, but as its accelerator. And in fact, the first data that came just after the first 30 days of national lockdown, collected by the anti-violence network. To tell (80 centers across the country) reported a surge in requests for help – 2867, which is 74.5% more than in the same period in 2018. Things got even worse the next year. Again, according to an association report To tell (Women online against violence) in 2021, the Italian anti-violence centers received a total of 20,711 women, of which 14,565 were “new”.. Thus, the overall growth compared to 2020 was 3.5% and 8.8% for new contacts..
Today, the day before November 25, 2022, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we have new data on hand. And the big news, the good news we’ve been waiting for, is that the numbers are down slightly, even if they’re not clear enough to significantly reverse the dramatic trend. According to the latest report on homicides in Italy, 82 women were killed in the family and emotional spheres in the first nine months of 2022 (8 less than last year), which rises to 88 if the data as of November 20 is taken into account. And, as is often the case, we have 42 and 52 murders, respectively, at the hands of a partner or ex. Joint report Prejudice and violence against women, presented precisely on November 25 by the Central Directorate of Criminal Police of the Department of Public Security, in cooperation with the University of Rome La Sapienza, is full of information, numbers and percentages, from which lines can be drawn that appear sinusoids, a reference to focus on the situation in our country.
So on the homicide front with female victims, we said the numbers are down a bit compared to the same period in 2021. but after 10 years, i.e. from 2012 to the present day, while the number of homicide victims has fallen by 44%, the decrease in female victims has stalled at -28%. In translation: men are killed much less than women. In the first six months of 2022, 61 women became victims of voluntary killings. Of these, 34% (corresponding to 21 women) are identifiable. alleged feminicidesunder the Istanbul Convention, cmurders, the victims of which are “women killed as women”, because they doubted their role in society or in the family. 38% of the victims had small children. As for the offender, it is the husband or partner in 56% of cases, the child or parent (19%), the ex-husband (13%), the boyfriend or ex-partner (12%). . Compared to the first half of 2021 femicides in Italy decreased by 26.1%.
The data is not only encouraging (whatever it may be), but important because in the same period (January-June 2022) more warnings. This is “an administrative measure that gives the quaestor the right to quickly influence the danger of people who act in situations of domestic violence or acts of persecution,” explains the prefect. Francis Messina, director of the Central Crime Unit of the State Police. According to the data, Domestic Violence Warnings Doubled in the First Six Months of 2022 and, in 70% of cases, the person who received the warning was a partner or former partner. Thus, from 2020 to date, more than 7,500 subjects have been alerted to domestic violence or stalking. And only one of them subsequently committed femicide, which indicates that the measure of restraint plays a decisive role in ending the cycle of violence.
Another positive sign, given the period from January to September 2022, is the fall espionage crimesgender violence indicators, such as stalking and abuse of family members and cohabitants. On the other hand, unfortunately an increase in sexual violence, which is increasing by 9% compared to 2021, and which in Italy in 92% of cases is directed against women. The collected figures also show that since the entry into force of the Red Code on August 9, 2019, the largest number of violations concerns measures of removal from the family home and the prohibition of approach, the growth of which in 2022, as well as crimes related to disfigurement, in revenge porn instead decreases. “So far, the strategy to combat violence against women through the Red Code has yielded important results. The legal and regulatory framework can still be improved by strengthening preventive measures, for example, by expanding the scope of the warning of the questor, ”commented the report. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosiexplaining that the big challenge “is to protect victims who need to be helped along the difficult path of communication by avoiding secondary victimization.”
Don’t forget that “diving can be unpleasant because this type of abuse takes place primarily in closed, familial and social environments.me, as he explained Vittorio Rizzi, Deputy Chief of Police and Chief Director of the Crime Police. In total, according to the 2022 edition of the pamphlet “This is not love” of the Central Directorate for Combating Crime of the State Police, in 2022 in Italy 86 women are victims of crimes between domestic violence, sexual violence and gender harassment every day in 2022, “if we draw a parallel between 1990 and 2020, we will decrease from 3092 murders to less than 285, but the most surprising data is the reports of sexual assault, because we are talking about 687 cases, which is practically nothing compared to the 4,500 cases that we count today.”, emphasizes Rizzi. This is thanks to a number of rules: from sexual violence, which is no longer a crime against morality, but a crime against the person, to the ratification of the Istanbul Convention and the Red Code, with a number of tools provided to the police, such as the warning and removal of the family home to More complaints came in today. And this is also thanks to the long battle to change the law on carnal violence, which, I hardly recall, lasted almost twenty years in Italy. Captain, not retreating a millimeter in this endless struggle, was the lawyer Tina Lagostena Bassi, who defended Donatella Colasanti during the trial of the Circeo massacre and participated in rape trial, with his famous speech, which you can find on Rai Play. The victim of the trial, filmed, was Fiorella, an 18-year-old Latin American girl, who alleged the gang rape of four men, including an acquaintance. Fiorella, an undeclared worker, said she was invited to the villa to discuss a job offer, but like Circeo, the invitation was a trap for violence against her.
The trial was complicated by the fact that the victim knew the main defendant and had no signs of beatings or ill-treatment.In an interview in 2007 Lagostena Bassi stressed that the televised trial was shocking because it showed how defense attorneys can be just as brutal as rapists against women, figuring out the details of the abuse and the privacy of the injured party, turning her into a defendant.: the psychological attitude that arose in the courtroom was that a woman of “good morals” could not be raped; that if there was violence, it must obviously have been caused by an indecent attitude on the part of a woman; that unless there was evidence of physical abuse or rebellion, the victim had to consent. Well, it happened in 1979. And to think that victim blaming is still going on today is a truly bitter observation.
Source: Elle