The invisible girl, a life spent in clandestine textile workshops, far from schools, hospitals and society

Its existence was discovered by chance by the local police and the Financial Police, in a blitz to dismantle an illegal textile laboratory in the province of Brescia. A girl of Chinese origin, now an adult, was among the people hiding in a basementwhere the police found cots arranged in rows and work tables illuminated by lamps always on. Until that moment, for the Italian state it existed only as a name on a population register.

The only formal act concerning her, in fact, is the registration of her birth at the Rovigo registry office, 18 years ago. From that moment, silence. For 17 years, that little girl lived like a ghost, far from schools, hospitals and societyto. His is a story that reveals the disturbing reality of life on the margins, conducted in the shadow of clandestine textile workshops.

As reported by the newspaper Bresciaoggithe young woman has always lived following her mother. After the separation from her father, who left the family with another son, the woman began a continuous pilgrimage between Rovigo, Padua and Brescia. Wherever he found work, he settled in clandestine workshops run by fellow countrymen, often located in basements or back rooms.

In these narrow spaces, the mother worked incessantly, while the daughter grew up in silence, without ever attending school, without ever being visited by a doctor. A surreal reality, yet shared with other invisible workers: men and women who sewed socks, clothes and fabrics in precarious conditions, living and sleeping in the same place.

The investigators found themselves faced with a well-established system in these textile laboratories: exhausting work shifts, minimal hygiene conditions, total absence of protection. And lives that escape all control, invisible not only to the eyes of the State, but also to those of society.

The fate of the invisible girl is now in the hands of the authorities. The Police Headquarters is evaluating the possibility of regularizing his position in Italybut it is not excluded that the case will have to go to the Regional Administrative Tribunal (Tar). In the meantime, the Brescia Public Prosecutor’s Office continues to investigate, trying to reconstruct the girl’s movements and the responsibilities of those who led her to live in these conditions.

Source: Vanity Fair

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