It's been 10 years since she got involved in a toxic, dangerous relationship. And it took just as many to come out of it, to denounce, to forgive. And talk about it so that those who have experienced the same nightmare as her can find the strength to get out of it and get help like her, no matter how difficult and scary it is. Claudia Lagona, aka Levante, talks about her experiences with Vanity Fair. “I was there too. “I can no longer say I know what certain women feel without admitting it,” she said in a lengthy interview. “Time, maturity and even becoming a mother have helped me process this “To stop being ashamed of who I am.” To forgive myself. And the desire to come into the light. This is how the Sicilian singer, who took part in the Sanremo Festival in 2020 and 2023, began her story to raise awareness of gender-based violence. «About ten years ago I fell in love with a man. “He was immediately very jealous,” remembers Levante, “in a kind of sick mechanism I had to justify myself to him.” They were signals, both his and mine. Anyway, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't in love, and I told her so. Since he couldn't have me anymore, he lost his temper. The man did not come to terms with reality and when the singer-songwriter broke off the relationship, he began blackmailing her and bombarding her with messages. “He tried to blackmail me: he had videos of us, private files. “He called me nonstop, he wrote me 980 emails in a month, so about 30 a day,” she continues, explaining that everyone around her was worried, “I was scared, but maybe not enough, at that moment.” I didn't think he would hurt me, I was more afraid for him.
The ban on approaching
Then a lawyer friend persuaded her to file a complaint, but it wasn't easy: “At a certain point I felt mostly shame, a lot of shame.” I felt stupid: I didn't know how to deal with the situation, which had been going on for a few months. The coldness of the authorities and the attempts at minimization made the process even more difficult. “Our world is a man’s world that protects men. In the end, they banned this person from coming near me, no matter what that's worth. Since then, the man has repeatedly made his voice heard. To apologize, to tell her that she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that she has started psychotherapy. «I don't answer him, so he deletes the messages. “I just hope that this interview doesn't pressure him to contact me,” he adds, “now I have forgiven him.” I realized that I met him not out of love but out of pain. His and mine. This person also revealed a major problem of mine, which was my attachment to a certain type of man: my father. Her parent died when Lagona was 9, and as far as she remembers, he wasn't violent, but “he was tough, strict, unyielding.” I was fascinated by people who looked like him for a long time. And to those who still accuse a woman of reporting violence after so many years, he replies: “You know, when someone asks with extreme stupidity: “Ah, why did she think about it for twenty years before she reported that she was raped?” ?” ? Because 19 of them were for forgiving yourself and the last was for finding courage.”
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