"IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF I STAYED QUIET"

Redazione, 2 ottobre 2023.

Vi riproponiamo, di seguito, l'articolo a firma Chiara Zarcone, avvocato del Foro di Torino  Giurista, già cultore della materia Diritto Penale presso l'Università degli Studi di Torino, già pubblicato il 29 settembre u.s., nella versione in lingua inglese.

Tale riproposizione intende soddisfare alcuni lettori non italiani che l'hanno esplicitamente richiesta.

Secondary victimization

"It was better if that woman took her own business and didn't call the ambulance. I wouldn't have reported it, it was better if I shut up." Word that meant so much.

Words of desperation and exasperation uttered by the victim of the group rape in Palermo.

How more to think this young woman that being silent about the violence she suffered would have been a solution. What could have led you to such thoughts?

Perhaps the looting to which it was subjected subsequent to the events is equally burdensome to the event of which it was a victim?

Article 18 of the Istanbul Convention sets out how the signatory States must commit themselves in order to 'avoid secondary victimisation', which consists of a series of attitudes put in place by third parties to the victim of a crime of violence, such as to revive the conditions of suffering to which it has been subjected.

Unfortunately, it is often attributable to the procedures of the institutions following the complaint, or in any case to the opening of legal proceedings.

Almost no one pays particular attention to secondary victimization, which unfortunately has claimed numerous victims - among all we must not forget the case of Tiziana Cantone, victim in the first place of her executioners deinde of a society deaf to her requests for help and who has not been able to protect her after the harm that had been done to her -. Tiziana, like other women, victims of a phenomenon of a reflected nature that adds to a sort of "primary victimization" that can be seen in the violent and abusive conduct of the perpetrators of the crime for which we are proceeding.

The most alarming side effect that this phenomenon produces is to discourage the presentation of the complaint by the victim himself. It is well understood how our system, like that of any civil society - cannot tolerate that the victim of a gender crime must be afraid to report the violence that has occurred!

The cultural root of the phenomenon must be sought in a series of stereotyped and established social customs that tend to justify in one way or another the perpetrator of the violence by blaming the victim against. The representatives of the institutions themselves, an expression of society, can be bearers, even unaware, of prejudices and gender stereotypes with a possible tendency to blame the victim (so-called victim blaming).

As always, it is our duty to look at the international sources that define and recognize victimization in an official act. Recommendation No. 8 of 2006 of the Council of Europe defines it as follows: 'secondary victimisation means victimisation that does not occur as a direct consequence of the criminal act, but through the response of institutions and individuals to the victim' (see Recommendation Rec (2006)8 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on assistance to crime victims, in which in paragraph 1.3 secondary victimisation is defined: 'Secondary victimisation means the victimisation that occurs not as a direct result of the criminal act but through the response of institutions and individuals to the victim').

The European Court of Human Rights has highlighted how Article 8 of the Convention attributes to the state the duty to protect 'the alleged victims of violence of gender image, dignity and personal confidentiality' also in their image, dignity and personal confidentiality.

This obligation restricts the right of judges to decide freely in cases where the image and privacy of the parties must be protected from unjustified interference. The Court also broadens its view of the matter even further by crystallising the principle that protection obligations are also expressed in the non-disclosure of personal information and data that is not strictly relevant to the resolution of the dispute.

With the ruling of May 27, 2021, in case J. L. c. Italy (appeal no. 5671/16), the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Italy for violation of Article 8 of the EDU Convention on the right to respect for private life and personal integrity as it considered excessive the emphasis placed on certain aspects of the private life of the applicant victim of a serious case of group sexual violence, considered completely irrelevant for the examination of credibility and for the decision of the trial elements that, precisely for this reason, should have remained absolutely confidential and in the first place totally unrelated to the process.

A fact remains which, unfortunately, is the cornerstone of the issue: the debates and the round tables have proved to be absolutely useless.

Proof of what has been said lies in the fact that a girl, the victim of a very serious case of sexual violence, even thought she had done wrong to ask for justice. The problem is not normative, at least not only, the problem is of much more articulated resolution since it resides in the socio-cultural heritage of the associates and affects not only Italy but all the countries of the world, perhaps with different stereotypes but still with gender stereotypes that are not "curable" except with a constant and never thrifty exercise of CULTURE!

Raise free children and be Masters of freedom yourself. Train them at the school of ideas, critical sense and respect.

We will be able to hope for a very distant day to have a certainly different world; looking at the horizon "you will perhaps see a "light"; it is the light of a more just, more humane, happier society; it is the light that has guided me in life; it is the light that you will have to continue to follow, for yourself, for your children, for those who will come after you." (Recremembering the spiritual testament of a Great Lawyer, Aldo Mirate, from whom I boast of having been unworthy but lucky student).