For all the Giulia to be saved

This entry is posted on number 19 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until May 6, 2025

A tour in the center in Padua with the father’s credit card available. A day among many, just a little more special. This is how Giulia Cecchettin He spent his last birthday, on May 5, 2023. The one in which he chose to buy books, many, in celebrating his 22 years. A gesture that tells well who was: curious, passionate, in love with knowledge and life. He was about to graduate in biomedical engineering and dreamed of becoming an illustrator, he attended the international school of Comics of Reggio Emilia. “We had decided to give ourselves time. Since then, after Mom had missed, we had said that we had everything of material things and
There was only time missing. So as a gift, for each birthday, we were together. And so it was also that day ». To talk about it, today that that date has a different weight and Giulia Cecchettin is gone, it is his father Gino. He did it in the first two episodes of the podcast ** What remains. For Giulia, for all,** made by **Vanity Fair ** To answer this question: what remains after a femicide? The photos, the posts on social media, the messages sent remain, the memories remain. Even unrealized dreams, broken families. But above all, as he told us Gino Cecchettinthat Giulia’s next birthday will spend it embracing her children Davide and Elena: “The pain remains. An unwary pain “. But also a possibility: to choose not to remain silent.

What will it do on May 5, this year?
«I will find Giulia, but I will try to spend that day intensely. I will try to spend time with Davide: remember her like this, in what should be its twenty -fourth birthday. I live Giulia in the newspaper remembering her, looking at some image of her. There is no day that does not take some photos in your hands or see some videos or listen to those vowels that I hated so much and of which I would now like to have an infinite number to listen to ».

What remained of Gino Cecchettin before 11 November 2023, the day on which Giulia disappeared?
«A solid gino as I was then, it seems to me. I am doing it for my other children Elena and Davide. But that gino has been enriched with many experiences and pain because if I think back to those days, how many tears versa, I still struggle to understand how I managed to get to today. It is a pain that I really would not like to try other parents and it is perhaps the reason that prompted me to do what I am doing today ».

Has he ever returned to Barcis, where was Giulia found?
«Giulia’s research week was the ugliest of my life. I returned to that place months later and was very exciting because that was a bed that hosted my daughter for a week. I am not very tied to material things as a value, but there I have heard something. Because I remember well that in that week, when I ate and when I went to bed, I felt inadequate, I felt wrong. I ate and I wondered if Giulia was doing the same, because I imagined it perhaps tied in a car and without the possibility of warming up or eating ».

How tiring is it to return to tell the femicide of his daughter, every time, especially when others happen?
«I think more about, because clearly Giulia will no longer return to our lives, not in physical fitness. But a father does not resign himself and therefore tries to revive his daughter in any way. Talking about it, as in this case, I think it is one of the ways, because when we tell Giulia in fact, you relive. Then I do it for all the Giulia that we can save. There is still a lot to do ».
Is there anything that is reproached with respect to his relationship with Giulia?
«Maybe this is the hardest part: to deal with yourself. We are talking about a loss, a parent is genetically prepared to leave his children in life, if it does not happen there was something that went wrong. “

What do you think?
«I always wonder what I could do more, then I also give me answers because Giulia was so good and judicious that it would have been an illegal to enter her private sphere. Making more likely meant sifting through his phone, messages, listening to calls, even if I understood that perhaps there was a story that was cut clearly and I recommended it. But I still struggle to say that I could do more towards him, because in front of a girl who still played life, I think, in the right way, it is difficult. The sense of guilt will remain
Always, a parent must protect and I have not succeeded. I am the first to put myself on the defendants’ counter ».

What would Giulia said?
«When I read those 15 points that she had written to leave Filippo, I saw a unique fil rouge, the lack of freedom. She had done it to give herself a right motivation, because she knew that perhaps she had made her suffer. But in all those points there was pure violence there. Here, if I could go back I would say “Giulia, this is missing freedom, so it is violence and you have to close”. Today I say it in schools ».

Is it also in response to this pain that the Cecchettin Foundation was born?
«Yes, because I think we can save many lives together. But today I would like above all that there were more men to join my voice ».

Do you think the government is doing enough to combat gender violence?
«I think the answer is the trend of things in our country. Gender violence is not stopping, on the contrary it seems that it is increasing, so we should do more. A woman is killed every three days. On an educational and legislative level, even if I think that although increasing the penalties you do not stop stopping feminicides ».

What do you feel towards Filippo Turetta?
«Fortunately, nothing, manages to be a stranger because I did the very difficult exercise of trying to remove it from my life. I have no problem nominating Filippo, not even to imagine it. When I do it I feel only pain, not anger. The only thing that really hurts me is the thought of Giulia’s last moments of life, I dare not think what she has crossed. And there was no one close there to be able to give them a little comfort. The only present was the one who said he loved her and instead he was killing her. This still hurts me ».

Is it in contact with the parents of Turetta?
«We only feel as a message, and I also tried to try to think about their life after this event. I think it changed a lot, how it was for me. I am judged that I am the father of the victim, let alone them. The prying looks are everywhere, in everyday life. However you are the parent of a murderer, so you are judged. As human beings we are always ready for judgment, instead the only thing that should be done in these cases is to give a
hug”.

Would you do it?
“If I see them I will do it, indeed I would like to find the opportunity to be able to do it.”

Vanity Fair’s podcast «What remains. For Giulia, for all », it will be available on the main listening platforms from May 5th.

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