Yesterday, thousands of Italians bid farewell to Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend, in front of the Basilica of Santa Justina in Padua. They dismissed her by waving bells and keys, in a symbol of this gesture that so many women around the world do when they feel afraid when returning home, clutching the keys to the portal. But also making noise, as his family had requested, who want their pain to be a separate point in the fight against gender violence in the country. “May Giulia’s memory inspire us to work together against violence, may her death be an impetus for change”, requested the young woman’s father at the funeral.
Something is moving in Italy when a black and white film about women’s emancipation in 1946 and the fight against gender violence, C’è ancora domani , directed and starring Paola Cortellesi, is beating all the box office records and is already among the top ten highest-grossing Italian films of all time. At the same time, in a strange coincidence between fiction and the most horrible reality, the murder of Giulia Cecchettin brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of the main cities of the country in demonstrations on November 25, the International Day against Violence against Women and Girls
Weeks have passed since he disappeared on November 11, but Italy is still in a state of shock. At first, the media treated it as a case of a missing couple, but it soon became clear that this was not the case. Giulia Cecchettin was about to graduate in Biomedical Engineering. She had recently left her boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, also a university student and from a wealthy family like her. But he couldn’t stand that Giulia was brighter than him and had graduated earlier, which is why, as she explained to her friends, she had asked him to delay some exams. She did not agree, but she did agree to continue seeing him, even though they were no longer together, because, she explained, Turetta had not come to terms with the breakup and was afraid he would hurt himself.
A few days later, security camera footage at an industrial complex showed a man punching a woman hard and dragging her into a car. That Saturday night, after having gone to dinner for a hamburger in a shopping center, a neighbor of Vigonobo, the town near Venice where she lived, called 112 and alerted of a fight between a man and a woman woman asking for help in a car, but the Italian police did not give her priority. The next day, Giulia’s father came to report her disappearance, but without knowing that his daughter had already been dead for hours. A week later, Giulia’s body was found, covered in black plastic bags, in a canal near Lake Barcis, at the foot of the Alps. Coroners ruled that she had been stabbed in the head and neck. He had twenty-six wounds, also on his hands, proof that he tried to resist. The next day, Filippo Turetta was arrested on the outskirts of Berlin. He had run out of money and gas and has already been extradited to Italy. He soon confessed that “he had killed his girlfriend”.
The case of Giulia Cecchetin has raised awareness in a country where, since the beginning of the year, 90 women have died killed by people from the family or emotional sphere. Of these, 58 have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners. Also for the intervention of his family. The words of Elena Cecchettin, the sister of Giulia, only 24 years old, who denied that Filippo Turetta was a monster, became particularly viral. “The monster is the exception within society, the one who departs from the normal canons. He is a healthy child of the patriarchal society that feeds on the culture of rape”, he publicly assured.
Gender stereotypes survive strongly in Italy. 16% of under-29s think it’s okay to monitor a girlfriend’s mobile phone, and one in five men think the way women dress can be a cause of sexual violence, something they agree a 16% of women. At a time when both the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the leader of the opposition, Elly Schlein, are women, something seems to be moving in Italy: it seems that the murder of Giulia Cecchettin has brought the right and the left and Parliament has adopted a law to strengthen legislation against gender-based violence through prevention measures and more training for professionals who have to deal with cases.
