That panpenalism has ensured that they have been introduced in our country in recent years new crimes and dozens of aggravating in the wake of news, social alarms and media phenomena.
However, you never learn anything from them by dismantling them.
The case Richetti which has occupied a large part of the political debate in the last week of the election campaign, if we had not been a week before the elections (but perhaps even longer because we are), could have become an occasion for a public debate on the violence the men, the trial media, the absurdity of the Red Code signed by the Keeper Bonafede, and the ease with which innocent people are condemned to remain innocent to the third degree even if they are male and if the crime they are accused of is rape.
The fact that the protagonist in this case was a candidate in the elections and that the scandal erupted a few days after the vote only aggravates a fact that deserves to be analyzed, even if it happens to every citizen of this country.
Because the criminal process is not celebrated with statistics and people, like facts, are never the same. Just like there are no exemplary penalties and lots per kilo penalties.
Of men victims of violence, stalking, abuse, blackmail, from women, even in the home, there are many. But they denounce even less than women because, in addition to the difficulties that the female gender shares in common, there is the stigma of shame suffered by the “alpha male” of being a victim of a woman.
But in order not to fall into the reverse cliche and turn it into a social phenomenon, the point remains that even if only a man was the victim of female violence, he deserves the same media, social and criminal justice guarantees as a woman.
The lack of information on the subject only makes the eventual case less recognizable and the protagonists less worthy of a fair assessment.
It is no coincidence that, given the information about the Richetti case, the loudest voices of politicians (the Democratic Party) and intellectuals (Michela Murgia) were immediately raised in defense of woman, alleged victim but sure accuser, the concept of the difficulty of women to denounce violence and therefore deserves media and political defense independently. There is also the undeniable possibility of meeting a political opponent.
But this concept, which has been true and correct for hundreds of cases, was not valid in this case. Where the victim, as it turned out from further details, is Richetti, ie the man.
Last summer’s precedent
But there was a similar case in the news these days that might have given us at least a moment’s hesitation before venturing into the woman’s defense as such.
The Canadian director Paul Haggis He was arrested in Italy last July while directing a festival in Ostuni after a woman accused him of rape after three days with him.
Faced with the woman’s complaint, the Brindisi Pretrial Judge has arrested Paul Haggis for “absolute inability to control his instincts and abandon his own intentions in an attitude of subterfuge and dominance”. Meanwhile, the news went around the world and the director became a monster. The Puglia region, which organized the festival, asked him not to take part in the events.
Two weeks later, however, the arrests were lifted because investigations revealed “the suspect’s lack of constraining violent behavior to commit sexual acts.” The methods of meeting between the suspect and the offended person, the woman’s spontaneous stay in the suspect’s apartment even after the abuse, the moments of conviviality between them during the days or the habitual communication of their commitments / movements, the adopted farewell procedures from the injured person – states the regulation – reflect a complexity of interactions between the parties which, while worthy of further investigation, currently cast negative judgment on Haggis’ personality as a person prone to physical or psychological violence exercise, weaken, in case of damage to third parties”.
Not satisfied, the Brindisi prosecutor appealed his release, but the Lecce review confirmed the charges fell: “The significant inconsistencies and inconsistencies highlighted in the analysis of the applicant’s version cast serious shadows on its reliability and endanger it significantly the requirement of circumstantial gravity. There are numerous inconsistencies that are likely to cast doubt on the truthfulness of the complainant’s statements. Transcripts of some conversations between the alleged victim and the director survive, from which it emerges that it is “an advertisement addressed to the woman to the director to meet him and spend a few days in her company, probably sooner establishing a personal rather than a professional relationship, so much so that she decides to share the same room and therefore the same bed. “Description of the victim as a weak woman and subjugated by the suspect’s personality”.
In short, between Paul Haggis and the woman who accused him of rape, he was the victim.
But even that case, solved during the Richetti Gate days, didn’t immediately suggest the victim could be the man. The only one was calendarfor obvious reasons of political expediency and knowledge of the facts.
But if, as said, the subject’s public profile objectively risks influencing the election result (and indeed Action has sued Fanpage for image damage), a similar episode can happen to anyone away from the cameras and the elections. Maybe even without the media counter-offensive in defence.
While it would be useful for anyone who has all learned to judge people freely from slogans that deviate from the truth and from stereotypes that sprinkle social phenomena.
A man can also become a victim of a woman.
For some, parity transcends here as well.