Femicides say that the most dangerous place and environment for a woman is often her home and sentimental sphere.
These are the two interrelated elements that emerge from a study on gender violence ("Feminicides on trial") conducted by researchers and professors from the University of Palermo coordinated by sociologist Alessandra Dino.
Two elements that unfortunately too often recur in the long trail of stories of murdered women.
Alessandra Dino underlines, in the essay, the "perverse effects" produced, both in judicial sentences and in some journalistic reports, of the definition of
"jealousy", used almost as a sort of extenuating circumstance for crimes
which must instead be classified simply and even more tragically as "futile and abject".
The paths of the research, promoted by the Miur, reveal the same characteristics of the phenomenon that are found in the latest news cases of which the Palermo singer Piera Napoli killed at home by her husband, Ilenia Fabbri slaughtered in the kitchen in Faenza and Roberta Siragusa, were victims, the 17-year-old murdered and burned, according to the accusation, by her boyfriend Pietro Morreale in Caccamo in the Palermo area.
The researchers of the University of Palermo analyzed for their survey, from which a volume in the publication phase was obtained,
370 sentences issued between 2010 and 2016.
Among the judicial papers, 27.4% refer to " a
crisis in the sphere of the sentimental relationship
"presented in the most various forms.
In some sentences - the researchers note - it is still called "jealousy" and is often associated with a
"morbid" dimension
.
For Alessandra Dino this is one of the many "prejudices", not only lexical but also judicial.
"We see it - he says - in the motivations and devices of some sentences. Almost always a crime for 'jealousy' is recognized with generic extenuating circumstances and the accused is almost never challenged with the aggravating circumstance of abject and futile reasons".
In some sentences we even read that the murderer acted under the pressure of "uncontrolled jealousy".
The Palermo researchers, who also interviewed thirty privileged witnesses (magistrates, lawyers, medical examiners) have deepened the reading of femicides to derive some strongly connoted typologies.
The husband or fiance kills to exercise "possession and dominion".
The extreme gesture in these cases becomes the affirmation of the unconditional power of man over woman and as the "
total denial of the woman's freedom to self-determine
".
The investigation then identified a few cases (just 3.3 percent) of killings linked to sexual violence and some episodes of
"altruistic femicide"
committed by husbands who cannot bear the suffering of their sick wife and kill her to spare her other pains. .
In general, in the criminal statistics, the number of women killed has increased as a percentage in the ratio of male deaths.
It is another indicator that expresses the greater vulnerability of women.
And it serves to give meaning to the proposals that Alessandra Dino
advocates
:
raising the level of prevention in the area, focusing on the training of magistrates and operators, creating a protection network for women at risk.
Without neglecting the reading of the cultural dimension of femicides.