Dear Felt,
I would like to know his opinion on a sentence that is making people discuss and that, in my opinion, represents a shameful step back on the civil, cultural and legal level. A man, condemned for having violently attacked his wife, obtained a discount of sentence with a motivation that leaves stunned: the judge believed that “the aggression was not premeditated but determined by a state of anger aroused by the discovery of the betrayal by his wife, whose behavior cannot be said to be irreproachable”.
Is it possible that in 2025 he is still writing black on white, in a courtroom, that an aggression can be “justified” by a woman’s behavior in some way?
Tell me, Vittorio: have we returned to the time of the stone?
Mario Secco
Dear Mario,
You are perfectly right to indign yourself, and I do it with you, in no uncertain terms. The sentence you refer to is a slap in justice, an insult to common sense and a wound for female dignity.
To say that the behavior of the woman “was not irreproachable” is equivalent to suggesting, not too veiledly, that there are women who deserve to be beaten. And this is allowed to me, it is inadmissible. It is a legal abomination.
A man’s aggression towards a woman is never justifiable. Never. Not even when there is a betrayal, not even when there is a disappointment, a provocation, a crisis. We live in a state of law, not in a tribal suk where honor washes with blood. If a man discovers he has been betrayed, he has a thousand ways to react, but has no right to use his hands. Never. Point.
And what does the judge do? He writes that the fault is of the attacker, but a little bit of the victim, because “it was not irreproachable”. Here is the short circuit: the victim is guilty and offers a moral justification to the executioner. A stuff that should make the veins tremble on the wrists to anyone who still has a minimum of lucidity and decency.
We really went back. After years of battles to say that no woman must ever be guilty for the violence she suffers, here we are, in 2025, to read in a sentence that “happens”, if you behave in a questionable way, to make you massacre with her husband. And maybe, who knows, tomorrow they will explain to us that he did “for love”.
I don’t know who he wrote that sentence, but I know it’s very serious. Not so much and not only for the penalty discount, as for the message it transmits: that male anger, if well motivated, can have its own legitimacy. And no, my dear: violence is never legitimate. It’s not a right, it’s a crime.
And it is not enough to be outraged.
It is necessary to supervise, protest, denounce, demand that justice will return to being justice. Because when the sentences begin to normalize violence, we are already in danger. And we will all take the next slap or worse. Even those who applaud or silence today. Or sensed.