“Violence against women is a pandemic that has lasted for millennia”

«Many calls and many interviews with women that we were already following. A number higher than the norm. They needed reassurance on their path and there was the ghost of loneliness“. Cristina Carelli talks about the experience of Cadmi, a home for abused women in Milan, and of the Lombardy region for which she is councilor Dire, the national network of anti-violence centers.

The voices of the anti-violence centers in the Italian regions tell different stories, but with common traits.

Violence, for everyone, did not reappear and disappear in the year of the pandemic. There is always. “Violence against women is a pandemic that has lasted for millennia,” says the Milanese expert. For all there was an initial organizational difficulty overcome in the following weeks.

This is the Milanese experience. “In the first lockdowm we observed the situation in the first week without knowing how to behave. After we left with the communication (call when they went out for shopping or throw out the garbage) and this brought new contacts, more than a hundred in Milan in the first months of the year, ”explains Cristina Carelli.

Remote contacts were activated as well as reception in presence in cases of particular emergency. It is the path that all the centers have chosen, even if not all have had the opportunity to remain open. Chiara Gravina, legal manager of the Roberta Lanzino Center in Cosenza explains: «Our response is less effective because we can welcome less in person. That’s a good answer, but it’s not one methodology correct for us. We succeeded with the women we already followed. More difficult with women who call for the first time. We have elderly workers and we must protect them too ».

In the Calabrian center in the first weeks of March the phone did not ring, afterwards there was an increase in phone calls, more calls than in the same period of the previous year between April and May. “Many calls came after the awareness campaigns. They called women who were locked in the house with an abusive partner and, immediately after the summer, many with the fear of another lockdown».

In Milan, up to May there was an average of 26 daily interviews, now there are about 12. “It is more difficult to work because our methodology is very much based on meeting: gazes, closeness”, explains Cristina Carelli, “We operators we are a positive mirror for women, to bring out everything they have to give ». The period is even more than crisis for women who need to rebuild their future, to get back on their feet independently. Job opportunities are limited, training opportunities have a thousand constraints. The legal aspect has slowed down. Social work struggles.

«We have organized ourselves to do everything possible from remote. We always have interviews with two operators. Now they do we are partly in presence and partly remotely. We refurbished parts of the offices and also the secret houses, to have places where women could be isolated in case of quarantine. There are higher economic costs. We are realities that live off fundraising which, in this period, is more difficult to do ”, they explain from Milan.

In Lombardy there has been an increase in requests from external age groups: the Young people from 18 to 30 years and over 75. There are those who have decided to leave after this period of great closeness to the perpetrator and a common concern is putting their children in difficulty and the fear of economic precariousness, as well as threats.

From South Tyrol adds Sigrid Pisanu: «The first lockdown was very strict and many were respectful of the rules. This posed objective difficulties. We have increased the telephone aspect that we have already active 24 hours a day both in Merano and Bolzano also to be ever closer to the women who live in the valleys and who may have more difficulties in moving. We have seen a wave of return on the women we already followed as a consequence of what had happened in forced isolation ».

The province here funds women’s housing services, but not all solutions can be lasting. «For a woman with children the hotel solution can be for a few nights. Then he needs a place that looks more like a house: residences, small apartments. She swabs herself before entering a shelter. The pandemic did not increase the violence that was already within society. Times have changed, but women, when they had the opportunity to ask for help, they did so ».

Dire, the network of anti-violence centers, has launched a competition: I can, reserved for young people between 18 and 30 to create a 2-minute short to explore how Get out of violence. The power to generate freedom for oneself, for everyone and everyone.