"The lady understands the questions, but we must also evaluate the quality of the answers. The quality is like a broken record."
Thus the psychiatrist Marco Garbarini, defense consultant of Alessia Pifferi, heard in the courtroom in the trial against the 38-year-old for the murder of her 18-month-old daughter Diana, left to die of starvation at home alone for 6 days.
"Looking at Mrs. Pifferi's life, how can we say that there hasn't been an impairment of her functioning in all areas? She has an absolutely impaired functioning - he added -, she has always had it, ever since she went to school."
Responding to the questions of the defender Alessia Pontenani and the prosecutor Francesco De Tommasi, the consultant also underlined that his findings were not "so different" compared to those obtained by the expert Elvezio Pirfo appointed by the Court of Assizes of Milan, who established the woman's ability to understand and will.
"The personality, the functionality of Mrs. Pifferi, as described by me and the expert, from my point of view is not so dissimilar. The difference is that I insert this functioning into an intellectual development disorder which explains how Mrs. and justifies what his behavior was. Pirfo describes the way it works but does not attribute it to a disorder."
To the public prosecutor's question about the reliability of the Wais test administered to the 38-year-old by the prison psychologists, the consultant replied that "yes", it was reliable, underlining that "it was carried out exclusively for clinical purposes and not for forensic psychiatric purposes ".
However, it was not reliable according to the psychiatrist Elvezio Pirfo, who was entrusted with the expert opinion on the woman, according to which she is capable of understanding and wanting.
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"Even assuming that the Wais test had been methodologically reliable, and it is not - he underlined -, it would not have determined the possibility in itself of saying that an intellectual disability existed". The expert recalled that there are "two clinical aspects on which pay attention: on the one hand dependence and on the other alexithymia". The first of these, he explained, "does not automatically constitute the disorder. If you read all the other criteria, they are missing. The need for care, the necessity of having to be protected, I believe it is indisputable in the subjective relationship. But that this automatically configures that condition that we call a disorder is not correct". The term alexithymia instead describes "a psychological condition which is as if it makes us live behind a glass. We look but we are shielded. This - added Pirfo - does not in itself constitute an illness".
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In Milan the sentence on the Pifferi case is expected between April and May
The sentence in the trial against Alessia Pifferi is expected between April and May.
According to the calendar set by the Court of Assizes of Milan, the discussion of the parties will begin at the hearing on 12 April and, if time permits, the judges could already retire to chambers.
Defender Alessia Pontenani, meanwhile, asked to acquire a letter from the parish priest of Ponte Lambro, the neighborhood where Pifferi lived with her 18-month-old daughter.
According to what the lawyer said outside the courtroom, the priest speaks of "a little girl who has not grown up" and of an "announced tragedy".
The little girl died of starvation after being left at home alone for 6 days in July 2022. The mother, as reconstructed in the investigations of the Milan prosecutor Francesco De Tommasi, had gone to her partner's house in the province of Bergamo, telling him that the little girl was at the seaside with other family members.
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