Lorenza Alagna’s teacher: «Once she told me: “Messina Denaro is a criminal for you, a father for me”»

L’lawyer of Lorenza Alagnadaughter of the former boss Matteo Messina Denaro, ordered her to keep quiet, to “refrain from the desire to appear in newspapers and TV”. But Fabiana Cusumano, an Italian teacher at the scientific high school, who was the girl’s teacher, has no intention of obeying.

“We suffocate in the silence of this piece of Sicily where Messina Denaro found widespread complicity,” explains al Courier. “AND no one will silence me in front of today’s kids if I take the liberty of indicating a positive fact in Lorenza’s travail and in her mother’s choices. It is no longer time for addiction and resignation, not even in the boss’s house». And again: «On this matter I am well aware that forces greater than Lorenza move and agitate, otherwise the 30 years on the run would not be explained. Who tells the truth is always uncomfortable. Who has the courage to say no, likewise. We have gone from the mafia of massacres to the mafia of silence. We are a weakened, worn-out city, massacred even by the mass media, but we are also a city that can, if it wants, change its life by being reborn from the rubble. To do this, you have to speak, not keep silent.”

And even if «the name of the boss could not even be pronounced», she has «always done it and I’ve always talked about the mafia and legality in class, about the courage to tell the truthnot to look elsewhere, out of fear, with a conspiratorial attitude that is not only Sicilian: “I know nothing, I have seen nothing, I want to know nothing”».

Professor Fabiana Cusumano is accused of having reported that Lorenza Alagna would have denied her father, but she denies this. “I never said that. Instead, I appreciated the fact that Lorenza never had relations with him, despite experiencing this discomfort and the pain of knowing who it was. I’m interested in all of this to talk about it with today’s students, to show them the straight path that can never converge with that of the mafiosi, even if they are relatives, fathers, brothers…».

The teacher, who was a substitute teacher in Lorenza Alagna’s class, remembers her as «a studious girl, attentive in class, well educated, strong and determined. She herself once told me: “For you, he could be a murderer, a criminal, a super boss. For me he remains my father”. I understood all her pain. Aware of being the daughter of a boss, but crossed by the essential love for a parentwhoever he is, even a mafioso».

Fabiana Cusumano says she had «an intense relationship with her and conor his cousin Francesco Panicola, another golden boy. Both absent during a day dedicated to the anti-mafia, the headmaster scolded them. I spoke to them trying to understand their torment, a traumatic experience. And they opened. Useful for still fueling a debate in the classroom today, for shaking up young people in this suffocating Castelvetrano».

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