The violence she suffered made her an even more determined woman. Having sat in Parliament for a year and a half, Lucia Annibali believes that much has been done to tackle violence against women, but that certain prejudices can only be overcome by investing in schools.
My political commitment is the fruit of a long period of reflection. I consider myself a free woman, and I needed to understand whether the place I was heading to — Parliament — would constrain me: I must say, however, that I realised I am very motivated. Of course, bringing my pain here is very, very complicated, especially because at this time one has the feeling of not being listened to very much.Lucia Annibali
Lucia Annibali was a young and brilliant lawyer, before her life changed forever one evening in 2013 due to a brutal acid attack carried out by two men hired by her former partner Luca Varani, who was subsequently sentenced to twenty years in prison, with twelve years handed down to the two perpetrators.
From working through that ordeal — a struggle made of strength, pain and many operations on her face — a direct political commitment was born, above all for the fight against violence against women: first a role as adviser to the Department for Equal Opportunities at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, and now as a member of parliament within the ranks of the Partito Democratico. And every occasion, such as the conference held at the Senate on 23 July to discuss the Codice rosso just passed — which among other things introduces the offence of permanent disfigurement of the face — is the right moment to recall something important: "Violence against women is not a social emergency, it is a structural feature of society."
Parliament has passed the Codice rosso, which contains provisions against violence against women. Yet your assessment of the text was negative — why?
To begin with, it has been said that the Codice rosso represents a first step on this issue, but fortunately that is not true: we are not at year zero — in the previous legislature the Istanbul Convention was ratified, the femicide law was passed, and the Anti-Mafia Code was enacted, which contains provisions concerning the offence of stalking. And then there were the various anti-violence plans that we had written and implemented at the Department for Equal Opportunities. This measure was supposed to improve and strengthen what is still lacking, above all in the area of protecting women, but that is not the case: first and foremost because it is financially neutral, and that is a major step backwards, because one stops investing in a fundamental issue.
What do you think of the obligation on the authorities to hear the victim of violence within three days of the report being filed?
During the three days that are supposed to elapse, the woman is not placed under protection, she is not in the care of the state, and we know that the period following the report is the most delicate. In reality this is nothing but a punitive measure, one that treats violence as a matter of fact, because there is no thought given to prevention, no investment in training, and there are legislative solutions that are distortions: the offence of revenge porn has been introduced, and that is a good thing, but it has not been included among those for which the victim must be heard within three days. And it actually seems that those three days are meant to be used to verify whether the reports are credible or whether they are simply a matter of "hysterical women," as someone in the majority put it.
Investing in education, rather than cracking down on offences, would therefore be the ideal response?
Certainly, yet prevention is missing. The great absentee from policies against violence is the Ministry of Education, the school system, which is suffering significant cuts and is not at all involved in this issue. Investment goes into training law enforcement, and that is fine, but not into engaging young people. Perhaps there is no appetite to fund scattershot projects, but in the five years just gone we ran many projects with schools, and I personally went to evaluate them.
Are you saying that while interventions are made on the justice side — perhaps by toughening sentences — the social dimension of the problem is being overlooked?
Yes, there is an enormous contradiction precisely at the cultural level. I am seeing a clear step backwards in society: sexist attacks against women, a kind of ridicule in some cases. Politically, too, there is also the question of child custody: there are attempts to push through this theory of parental alienation, which is terrible and extremely dangerous, not only for women but for children too.
You managed to emerge from what happened to you as a new woman; you told your story in a book, Io ci sono. La mia storia di non amore, and you have put yourself forward in politics, but for many other women the trauma is often insurmountable. What can the state realistically do for them?
The trauma is there even for those who manage to move forward — it is always something that undermines your sense of security, understood also as physical safety, as protection. The state must start taking this issue and this suffering seriously, placing them at the centre, because this is not a marginal issue that crops up every now and then, but something that is born and takes root in the social fabric. It is there that all the prejudices that lead to individual stories not being properly assessed are nurtured. What matters, instead, is providing real, deep and ongoing support, in the same way that is done for other policy areas.
So we are not at year zero, but there is still a great deal to be done…
It seems to me that policies on this issue are too marginal and that they are somewhat affected by the very prejudices that feed them: we have this patriarchy embedded within us, within society — we see it in court practice too. The parliamentary commission on femicide deals with this as well. Perhaps we should free ourselves more from stereotypes and prejudices, and acknowledge that we are not facing a social emergency but a structural feature of society. Imagine if the problem were reversed, if it were large numbers of men being killed: perhaps there would be far more discussion about it.
