I read, disgusted, that “the people of Seminara, after the arrests of the torture of the raped daughter (all sentenced with penalties from 5 to 13 years old), turned the shoulders and isolated the victim’s family from the rest of the community”: a reality that forced the young people of the young woman to change their country. Is the questions: is Seminara a civilized country? Is Seminara an exception or one of the numerous realities of today’s Calabria? If the “disciples” of the ‘Ndrangheta, as are evidently the inhabitants of Seminara, have elected this mayor how much their declarations of solidarity for the victim apply?
Roberto Bellia
Vermezzo with zeal
Dear Roberto,
Well yes, it is in Seminara that a few years ago two minors were raped by the pack. Condish intervened, but this did not do justice to the victims. The girl who had the courage to denounce the abuses suffered is taking the bags to move elsewhere together with her family, since the entire community refuses her and her family, as she considered guilty of having stained the image and decoration of the village, the reputation of the rapists and the good name of the families of the latter. It is incredible but it happens that the victims of sexual violence in Calabria must be put under escort, as happened, for example, to Anna Maria Scarfò, who has lived under protection since 2010, following the choice to denounce its torturers, who for years have systematically raped her as if it were an object. Even Anna Maria had to leave her country, because it is discarded by the community, insulted, persecuted, threatened. These are stories that are repeated: through a bizarre and sick inversion of the roles, the victims are guilty. They were the ones to disturb certain balances, they were the ones who did nothing to avoid what they also suffered, they were the ones who caused so much suffering and shame, they were the ones to determine the arrests of men who, after all, did not do anything wrong, because the woman, in certain environments, is still considered “a whore that was there, which caused, that she wanted”. Yes, he makes all this horror, but corresponds to reality, whether we like it or not, and I do not intend to expire in the logic of silence, to resign myself, like the Calabrians who live in certain areas, to the law of silence, which leads to silence, to pretend not to have seen, to take a sides tacitly on the side of the strongest, of the criminal, of the murderer, of the rapist, of the mafia. It would be time to break certain schemes, to arise against certain customs, to scream against certain crimes: not only the crime of rape, but also the crime put in place by all those who launch against the abused because it has not submitted to that unwritten rule that provides that it takes care of lowering the head, subjecting itself to the powerful, suffering, renouncing its dignity in the name of a fake living. social. And this is how a girl, her brothers and her parents are abandoning a country where they were born and raised because they would even be in danger. A few days ago the carabinieri notified the young woman an extraordinary and urgent measure through which she was informed that, due to the social unease generated by residing in that environment that has become hostile and to prevent problems of various types and ensure to her and her relatives to be able to live in peace, accommodation has been made available in another country in Calabria. It was the president of the Roberto Occhiuto region to take action to achieve all this, namely the transfer of the girl and the family through the granting of accommodation. Commendable initiative, ok. In this way we wanted to give a strong signal: the institutions are on the side of those who report and the victim. But it seems to me that a message of total surrender has been launched to a primitive mentality that foresees that it is the victim who migrates, hiding, having to run away, and not the executioners and their supporters. I really believe that this girl should have remained where she is and that they should not have won those who wanted to hinder her.
As for the mayor, beyond the declarations, the manifestations, the words of closeness expressed against the abused, the symbolic embrace to his family and to her, as per institutional script, I don’t know what it should do. I guess it’s not easy to be mayor in similar habitats.
Perhaps, if I were the first citizen of Seminara, I would oppose the transfer of the family, I would make myself his bulwark, I would demand my citizens for a woman who had the courage to tear that heavy and unbearable veil of silence that forces the Calabrians to bend their heads and to remain in the stagnant waters of a civil, cultural, moral, human evolution, and consequently also economic, which has always been in stall.
The state triumphs not when a house elsewhere is found elsewhere, but when she makes her stay where she is. He is his sacrosanct right.