“He hadn’t reported. He hadn’t worried. He hadn’t understood. ” Why do we always blame women?

It seemed to me immediately that there was something out of tune in the words of those who investigate, in Messina, on Femicide by Sara Campanella. They can be listened to in the videos of the press conference. The more they read them, the more you listen to them, the more the feeling becomes certainty. There is something wrong with this narrative.

“There had been attention from this young man, even in an insistent way, repeated over time. Being never broadcast in something neither violent, nor threatening, nor particularly morbid, evidently they had not aroused particular attention from the victim himself».

«He had shared these attentions with his companions and classmates that bothering her, but that they had not exceeded that threshold as to determine a concern in the victim».

“It does not appear that the poor girl had ever filed a complaint in the past, Despite these attention, defined as morbid by friends, they had been going on for two years. This is a warning to the need to report: it is yet another case in which one seems to emerge underestimation by the same victim».

Attentions had not aroused concern in her, she had not reported, she had not noticed the danger. It seems that Sara’s fault is, in this case, and in general that the victim is the person who made a mistake, responsible for what happened to her. Everything else is diminished by emphasizing what the woman victim of stalking, violence or femicide did not do. The Association Saying – Women on the net against violence speaks of statements that tend to blame the woman avoiding attention to the inadequate preventive system. And it brings new examples. “He was obsessed,” as Sara’s killer confessed to be. “He had put an end to the report,” as in the case of Ilaria sula killed by an ex. There is such a phrase in each of the feminicides’ narratives, 11 in the first three months of the year in Italy, and violence that we read by scrolling through the chronicles.

«Non you need narratives that justify. Institutions capable of recognizing the signs of violence are needed, intervening before it is too late and stop minimizing persecutory behaviors as unrequited invagment. We need to stop asking women to save themselves alone»Explains women on the net against violence.

Instead, it seems that each time the action of the murderer or the violent is minimized and so the victim’s position is diminished. It is the first step of the secondary victimization of women who continue, unfortunately, when the victims come to report. Less than 30% of those that turn to the anti -violence centers denounce. For Elena Biaggioni, criminal lawyer and vice -president to say “the point is not so much to give women the input, thought, to denounce, but one must think of creating a context in which women who denounce are not hindered: it is useless to tell the woman to throw themselves and denounce if we are not ready to collect it”.

There are many fears and thoughts that brake those who suffer violence: The fear of denouncing your son’s father, the fear of ruining him, that of the social stigma, that of not being believed, the fear of ending up in a circuit that no longer depends on you and that you cannot control. Statistics say that one in three women underwent a form of violence in her life. We may all meet one, we can all know who the author of violence is.

Are we sure that only the woman victim of violence can denounce?

Are we sure we don’t think that a little guilt is of those women who have not reported?

Are we sure that we would have had the strength to report when we told stories of women killed so many times despite having done it?

It is not enough to make laws, such as the red code, or establish the crime of femicide, to stop violence, the change is cultural and also passes from the way we talk about those who suffer violence that can no longer be “the poor girl who did not report because she had not realized”. Femicides are a social problem, not a personal question.