“From a criminological point of view, the Paderno Dugnano tragedy dramatically tells us the dynamics of a family context in which one of the children, I am talking about the 17-year-old who confessed, felt strongly inadequate compared to the other members of his family. And perhaps he wanted to ‘avenge’ this feeling of extraneousnesswhich he himself speaks of, through violent action”. This is what criminologist and psychotherapist Silvio Ciappi, an expert in youth problems, told the editorial staff of ilGiornale regarding the triple homicide in Paderno Dugnano, which occurred during the night between August 31st and September 1st.
Riccardo C., 17, admitted to killing his parents and 12-year-old brother, without any apparent reason: “I felt unwell. I don’t know why I did it.”he told investigators during the first interrogation. “We will have to dig deep to try to understand what drove this boy to attack and fatally attack his parents. It is probably true that he does not give himself a reason for what happened either,” the expert specifies.
Dr. Ciappi, the 17-year-old said he attacked his little brother first. In your opinion, why did he choose to immediately attack the youngest and most vulnerable member of the family?
“Reasoning in the realm of hypotheses, it is likely that this boy recognized in his twelve-year-old brother a personality in the making, not yet defined and, therefore, with a future ahead of him. While he, perhaps, already felt determined. As if he were without possibilities or a way out of himself. Or, another hypothesis, is that he could have used his brother ‘as bait’ to attract his parents”.
Meaning what?
“I would not rule out that the boy’s target, even at an unconscious level, was actually his parents. Perhaps he was harboring resentment towards his mother and father for a series of reasons that we do not know. Perhaps they had projected onto him, the ‘little einstein‘, as the poor mother called it, of the expectations that the boy felt he could not meet.”
An initial forensic examination revealed that the parents and little brother were killed with a total of 68 stab wounds.
“From a criminological point of view, this persecution is called overkill and leads the murderer to attack the victim with particular violence even when the latter has already ceased to live. In this specific case, the ‘overkill’ gives us the measure of the anger that was probably sedimented in the mind of the author of the triple homicide. After all, he himself spoke of ‘an explosion‘ during confession”.
Speaking of confession. The 17-year-old explained to the magistrates that he had another plan: “The idea was to stab my brother and father to death and then pretend that my mother had attacked me and I had defended myself.”were his words. Then he changed his version, first blaming his father and then taking full responsibility for the fact. How do you explain it?
“Without going into discussions regarding possible premeditation, the fact that the boy had in mind to attribute the responsibility for the murders to one or the other parent, probably confirms that he harbored some form of resentment towards the latter. In any case, I believe that loneliness, commonly understood, has very little to do with this terrible tragedy. I think that the key to understanding it is another.”
That is to say?
“The confessed criminal said he felt ‘like a foreign body‘ within the family. And so, I would start from this feeling of alienation to try to understand what mechanism was triggered and led to the dramatic explosion of anger. Just to be clear, he acted as if he were a virus: he attacked his family nucleus from the outside. He behaved like ‘a foreign body’precisely”.
According to the minutes, the 17-year-old said he wanted to go to Ukraine, justifying this statement with the desire to “see up close the suffering of the people who live in those territories“. What do you think about it?
“I think it was a way to project onto others the suffering he had inside and couldn’t relate to. A suffering that then turned into blind fury, precisely because it remained unexplored.”
It seems that the boy was leading an apparently “normal” life and had not shown any signs of discomfort. How do you consider the alleged “absence of signs”?
“Unfortunately, only the parents could tell us if there really were no signs that were indicative of some discomfort. In my opinion, the fact that he had a debt in mathematics, a subject in which he excelled, could have been a small alarm bell. Clearly there is no direct cause-effect link with the murder. Other factors could have intervened”.
Which?
“Today’s teenagers live in a horizontal, completely flat universe, where everyone has to conform and be extremely high-performing. And those who don’t conform are outside the ‘pack’. This too can cause a sense of profound inadequacy and frustration.”
How much of an impact does the use of social media have, if any?
“Contrary to what some people think, I don’t believe at all that social media should be demonized. They are an integral communication tool of the era we live in. The ‘old world’ no longer exists and I find this constant comparison with the past unedifying. In fact, I’ll tell you more. The fact that a kid is totally alien to the social universe, as the 17-year-old from Paderno seems to have been, can be indicative of a tendency towards isolation or a lack of interest in social relationships.”
So, how can a parent detect any possible discomfort in their child?
“You have to talk to your children, explore topics that go beyond academic performance or
soccer match. But above all, we need to educate kids about the culture of failure. We would all like a little Mozart in the house, but perhaps it is better to raise a child with a solid emotional system than an unhappy genius”.