Today a series of events will start in Verona, involving all the provinces of Italy, linked to the State Police "This is not love" campaign, the result of the strategy of the Central Anti-Crime Department, led by the Prefect Vittorio Rizzi, on the subject of contrast violence against women in view of the International Day to be celebrated next Sunday 25 November around the world.
On this occasion, in the presence of the Chief of Police Franco Gabrielli, will be presented the second edition of the publication that bears the name of the campaign and which takes stock of data on gender violence in the possession of police forces, on the tools available of women to defend themselves, on information initiatives and on the strategy of the State Police, with a series of vignettes that stigmatize recurrent male behavior in the stories of violence, such as that of justifying in the name of love selfishness, possessiveness and mistreatment or asking the fateful last date for a woman who decides to close a relationship.
In terms of data, for the first nine months of the 2018 there is a downward trend in the voluntary killings of 19% (from 286 to 231 dead) which confirms a trend already recorded in the last 10 years: but, also in this time span , if men who are victims of voluntary homicide decrease by 28%, the number of women killed falls only by 3 units (from 97 to 94 cases).
In this context, the femicide (non-legal term, but in common use) is a sub-category in which only the cases of killing a woman by a man as a woman, as an extreme act of prevarication and superiority.
It is commonly thought that the femicide is the murder occurred in the family or emotional and, in fact, the 78% of the killings of women take place in the home.
Not all the murders of women in the family or emotional sphere are, however, to be considered feminicides, in the sense of killing women by reason of their gender. Of the 94 murders of women in the first nine months of the 2018, 73 have occurred in the family, but the timely examination of all the dramatic dynamics that led to the killing shows that only in 32 cases can properly speak of femicide, having to exclude cases in which, for example, the husband kills his terminally ill wife to end his suffering, the brother kills his sister for economic reasons or the nephew kills his grandmother for inheritance. Also those cases in which the femicide has caused other innocent victims have been analyzed, as the case in which the husband kills his wife, but then does not stop and even kills the children.
The reading of the trend of "spy crimes" (abuse in the family, stalking, beatings, sexual violence) in the four-year period 2014-2017 and in the first 8 months of 2018 - compared to the same period last year - shows an overall decline with a significant increase in law enforcement (measured in terms of complaints and arrests).
More in particular:
- Persecutory acts: 8.414 are the cases of stalking in the January / August 2018, compared to 9.905 in the same period of 2017 (-15,05%); the law enforcement action carried out by the police forces has led to reporting to the judicial authority of 9.351 alleged perpetrators of the crime during the period of 2018, compared to 8.949 of the same period of 2017 (+ 4,49%);
The number of stalking subjects recorded an increase of + 23% in the period examined (passing from 672 to 827 individuals).
In the same period, only the 19% of the subjects already warned for stalking become new authors of the same crime and the low percentage of recidivism demonstrates the positive effect of the provision.
- Maltreatment in the family: 10.204 in the period January / August 2018, compared to 10.682 in the same period of the 2017 (-4,47%); in the same period, the law enforcement action carried out by the police forces led to reporting to the judicial authority of 11.801 alleged perpetrators of this crime, against 10.644 in the same period as 2017 (+ 10,87%);
The number of subjects subjected to domestic violence records an increase of + 31,5% in the period January / August 2018 compared to the same period of 2017 (passing from 409 to 538 individuals).
In the same period, only the 17% of the subjects already warned for maltreatment in the family are again authors of the same crime and the low percentage of recidivism demonstrates the deterrent effect of the provision.
- Sexual violence: 2.977 in the period January / August 2018, compared to 3.189 in the same period of 2017 (-6,65%); the law enforcement action carried out by the police led to the reporting to the judicial authority of 3.217 alleged offenders in the January / August period 2018, compared to 3.011 in the same period of 2017 (+ 6,84%);
- Beat: 8.718 in the period January / August 2018, against 9.823 in the same period of 2017 (-11,25%); police law enforcement action has led to reporting to the judicial authority of 6.346 alleged perpetrators in the January / August period 2018, against 6.545 in the same period as 2017 (-3,04%).
The total number of spy crimes with female victims was also compared to the female population registered for each geographical area. It has emerged an incidence of the phenomenon that crosses the whole of the Peninsula, with a picture perhaps different from that which generally envisages the collective imagination, where Sicily is the region where women denounce more, followed by Campania and the 'Emilia Romagna.
With reference, instead, to the citizenship of the alleged offenders, on average the 27% are foreigners but the percentage rises to 34% if they are considered the only presumed minors.
From a strictly operational and preventive point of view, since January 2017 the EVA protocol (Examination of Acted Violence) has been adopted by the Police Headquarters of all provinces, a tool that codifies the methods of intervention in cases of family disputes and allows to insert in the database of the police forces (SDI) - regardless of the proposition of a complaint or complaint - a series of useful information to reconstruct all the episodes of domestic violence that involved a family unit. The EVA protocol has so far made it possible to manage and analyze over 9.000 reports, leading to arrest in 159 cases, in 261 cases to the complaint and in 81 to expulsion to the family home.
"A woman who is a victim of physical, psychological, economic and social violence, precisely because she is prevailed as a woman and deprived of freedom and autonomy, feels alone, is resigned, feels ashamed, is afraid of retaliation for herself and her children, he believes he is guilty, fearing not to be believed. The policeman who asks for help must know how to respond to this pain, aware that most of the time the aggressor is a person to whom the woman is bound by emotional bonds that determine a condition of serious emotional and psychological stress. It is not enough to apply the law, it is necessary to ensure the reception of the woman, information and support necessary to overcome the condition of subjugation and isolation she is experiencing ". In the words of the Chief of Police, Prefect Franco Gabrielli, the whole strategy of the State Police to protect women, with operational practices that want to inform, ensure the centrality of the victim, listen and protect, take charge of pain and network with the subjects public and private sectors engaged in the territory.