Translator: Claudia Di Lorenzo Reviewer: Riccardo Vide
Faced with this image, you won't be indifferent, I know,
because this is an image of war
and evokes many feelings.
It's not just the war that destroys,
that creates disasters,
that creates wounds.
It is a war that elicits
very, very strong feelings.
Why did I choose this picture to introduce my theme?
Because I would like you to focus precisely on these feelings,
which are not only devastation, but dismay also,
desperation, astonishnent and fear.
This is felt by a lot of women
in an underground war that's alongside us every day,
one I discovered almost by chance.
It was 1990,
I approached some lawyers
who contested what then was a US decision
to attack Iraq, to attack oil countries,
and we were lawyers for peace.
And there we contested that arrogant domination approach
they wanted to impose.
I don't know if any of you remember,
people were talking of a possible Third World War,
the Gulf War.
Back then, a woman approached me at an assembly
where we talked about all these things,
and she said to me,
"Why don't you join our association?
We are establishing a group of women
that take care of other women who are suffering from violence."
I was immediately intrigued.
I went, I accepted this invitation
and I really discovered an underground war,
a war that women were talking us about,
but compared to today it was still unknown and unspoken.
But who were these women?
They were many types of women.
There was a lot of prejudice,
it was thought they only were desperate women,
without resources, abilities, education.
Actually, this was not the case.
I even found some of my colleagues
who told me about episodes of violence
that always sound unbelievable.
Housewives, managers, freelancers,
lower class, middle class and upper class people,
people with good economic status.
It is typically thought,
if someone has a good status, is less likely to be influenced.
It's not true.
We immediately said, this violence was transversal.
And so why was it still existing?
An aphorism comes to help me:
"Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of."
It's really true: in fact, we listened to all those stories
and then we said:
"How do we help these women, so that they can escape violence,
joining them and supporting them?"
So we started studying what could be done
in a careful, competent and also scientific way.
But everything always came to us from the stories of the women.
The "cycle of violence" was studied in the late 70s in the US,
by Lenore Walker, who was a therapist.
After listening to so many women, she elaborated it
and brought to everyone's attention.
how these stories can develop.
So, what is the cycle of violence?
She tells us how you enter this tunnel, and how difficult it is to leave it.
There is the first phase, called "Tension Building",
which is about provocation,
where there are many particular moments where -
By the way, every story is different.
There is the woman who tells us
about a not-so-tasty pasta, or something like that,
taken with the dish and thrown into the waste bin.
Or the pasta thrown over the woman's head.
I'm quoting stories I personally listened to.
And one wonders, why should a woman stick with such a situation?
This is the first question a woman is generally asked.
Well, I'd like to bring you the voice of a woman I assisted
and who escaped violence, and I'd like her to tell you,
because she explained very clearly, right in front of a judge, what drove her.
Woman: "Because I loved him, and I thought he could change".
MU: Because I loved him, and I thought he could change.
This is just as typical.
One says,
"Well, that's weird: how come these women put themselves in this situation?"
Yet, we must come to terms also with our emotions.
And the other thing?
You go through a phase where the tension builds,
and small or bold provocations are thrown,
to one where the tension erupts.
It erupts with an aggression -
but make no mistake, it's not just a physical assault.
There may also be verbal aggression,
maybe also scaring people through the breaking of objects,
through the slamming of doors,
through a whole series of acts that lead to the person saying,
"Here I decide what to do and how it is done."
And so, this is the phase where, after the initial confusion,
you arrive at dismay,
because the very person who loves you is doing that to you,
it is a person that you maybe entrusted with many confidences,
they're a piece of your life.
And so, how to react to dismay?
Let me bring you again the voice of this woman.
"I always nurtured a hope that it was also my fault,
and that this would not have happened, had I behaved differently."
I repeat, she says:
"I nurtured a hope that it was also my fault".
Gosh.
A sentence that should make you shudder.
When I heard it and read it, in the criminal trial,
I thought I misread it.
In reality this is how it is.
She hopes it's like this to be able to escape it.
The problem is that you don't escape, because - guess what happens?
There is the so-called "Honeymoon" phase,
which is perhaps, in the end, the most dangerous one,
even more dangerous than aggression,
because it makes a woman think
that regret and loving care,
which the violent subject now shows,
to save a situation he's perhaps losing control of,
maybe will make him change.
Maybe something will happen so there will be no more,
that situation won't be repeated.
What Leonor Walker tells us instead is, this is a recurring phase of a cycle,
it's a tunnel
and when we intercept women we would like them in that stage,
between the honeymoon and the abuses,
to decide, because that is the right time to escape,
it’s the moment when dismay turns into fear,
the feelings of a war re-emerge,
and something can be changed.
Instead, the cycle starts back again
if you don't escape and if you believe in that regret.
I'd like you to hear her voice, for the last time.
Woman: "What was beyond me is how he, after our quarrels,
where he harshly insulted me, 'Fuck you, bitch',
horrible words of all kinds,
after he calmed down, he wanted to have sex with me.
And I couldn't say no,
otherwise everything would start all over again."
She had already taken into account the impossibility to say no,
otherwise it would have started all over again.
A paralyzing fear, for a woman in this situation
and allows violent people to get by.
In all these phases, when it comes to abuse,
when the cycle starts again,
the abuse that comes next time,
I always say so the all the women I meet,
will be increasingly severe,
so running away as soon as possible is absolutely important.
And what are the numbers for Italy about gender violence?
You may even have heard them already.
One woman out of three, 16 to 70, has suffered violence,
and they're seven million women, says our National Institute of Statistics.
four and half milion of whom experienced sexual harassment
and for more than a million underwent even more serious forms of violence,
like rapes or attempted rapes.
This is the situation of the numbers.
These numbers are robust, repeat themselves,
and we have brought to light
also with the work of women's help centres.
But with our work, we also highlighted the costs.
Because we must also ask ourselves this question:
what happens, when a woman is stuck in a violent relationship?
Many things happen, also in the outer world,
like going to the E.R.,
requiring a therapist, taking medications,
calling the police, maybe she will sue him.
Suing seems to be a silver bullet, but it is not necessarily the case.
Very often it is not, unfortunately.
There are courts
constantly at work on cases like this.
There are all the legal costs, the costs of social services
and women's crisis centres that play their part.
And all these costs are multiplied by the productivity factor,
because a woman under violence
will no longer be the same person, socially speaking,
she can't be as productive
as someone that is, more or less, living their life peacefully.
What is the result of this operation?
It has been estimated, 26 billion euros.
And we believe, this is also underestimated;
I'm talking about Italy, not about the world, of course.
And in 2017 in Italy,
about 50,000 women went to a women's crisis centre.
You understand, numbers don't match.
They should all be reconsidered,
and shortly I will also tell you how,
in order to involve all of us in what we can do,
even if we don't work in a women's crisis centre.
Why?
Because we would also like to see you, women especially,
in our centre, maybe to help us.
Thre are many ways you can help women's crisis centres,
but I'm not here today to ask for this kind of help.
It's not a personal help, nor a financial aid,
from the point of view of being there and of supporting us,
because that's what one generally does when it comes to violence.
What I would like to ask you
it is to help us all
cut this number of women
who are forced to turn to women's crisis centres.
How, you might ask?
Well, that's a situation we must evaluate all together,
because today we're talking about changes
and we have to think that, unfortunately,
no big changes on the matter were seen recently.
That's because even the top manager,
even a skilled person with financial and cultural resources
can be involved in this situation,
because it is a matter of intimate relationships.
It is said, violence is a relationship,
is determined by a relationship of domination between genders.
If this is true, let's think about it,
because there's prevention, which is important for us.
What does prevention consist of?
We can all do prevention, starting with education,
with the education of our children.
I always say, there are stereotypes that we are still unable to shake off.
Boys are told, "Don't cry like a sissy",
Boys go for football, rugby,
boys practise sports, let's say, with a certain strength, virulence;
girls are told instead, don't be a tomboy.
Behave yourself. Be polite. Be nice.
Be nice, mostly.
When we do all this -
Many women, many girls go to dance school,
the dance for little girls is now the whole world.
So when we take these steps,
we risk having built
a structure that leads that man or that woman,
that future man, that future woman
to be able to enter the violence mechanism.
Because it is a mechanism where one dominates
and the other one is victim.
So, be careful,
surely here, in this room,
there are people who have either suffered violence
or have acted violently.
And, if statistics can be trusted,
as I believe,
we should start asking ourselves questions about how we behave,
and this is the first uncomfortable thing I'm going to tell you.
Because if we continue behaving like this,
we will also be accomplices of certain forms of violence.
If we ignore, for example, what happens between a female friend or colleague
and the male colleague, who may behave incorrectly -
or worse, aggressively,
because, anyway, "you can say many things to a woman",
she is not going to react much like a man would.
So, let's lay the groundwork for this.
What I'm asking you is to change,
to change our way of thinking,
knowing that women are inside the cycle of violence
also because sometimes we turn our head away
or because we have "designed" a manner for women
to be within those types of situations and relationships.
Hence, we should change our minds for changing our actions
and maybe everyone will be a little more free and happy.
Thank you.
(Applause)