A fast track to approve the “Free to choose” bill as soon as possible. A measure to protect and assist the children of mafia families and parents, almost always mothers, who want to distance themselves from the criminal context. Don Luigi Ciotti asks for it, president of Libera, «because there are many women who have put themselves on the line and who continue to take risks. Who are hidden, who do not have the fundamental and necessary tools to move forward. A preferential lane – this is done in many situations – because people’s lives are at stake here.”
There is emotion in the Queen’s room, in Montecitorio, where they are listened to the testimonies of those who decided to escape the mafia context by running away with their children. Lives in danger who would like to be able to rebuild under another name, with other guarantees. Those that the bipartisan law – first signatory in the Chamber Chiara Colosimo (Brothers of Italy)president of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into mafia phenomena, and first signatory in the Senate Vincenza Rando (Pd)president of the Committee, within the Anti-Mafia Commission, “Culture of legality and protection of minors” – aims to ensure.
«A moment that I have been waiting for for 13 years, since 2012 when this jurisprudential orientation was born», says magistrate Roberto Di Bella, president of the Juvenile Court of Catania and, for 25 years, of that of Reggio Calabria, where the project was born. In his experience he had seen that “the mafia is inherited” and that it was therefore necessary to think of prevention paths for minors so as not to find themselves, generation after generation, as defendants and convicted in mafia trials. Faced with children involved in drug trafficking at an early age, induced to take up weapons at the age of eight or nine, used, at two or three, as shields for their crimes, the magistrate decided to use the instrument of removal just as it is done in abusive families. Measures then requested, increasingly also by mothers. Thanks to a protocol in which, in addition to the various ministries, the Episcopal Conference and the Libera association were also involveda network was created to help these people move away from the area and hide from those who consider it a shame to break away from the mafia family.
Currently 200 minors and 34 women, “seven of whom have become collaborators of justice” have signed up to the protocol. “And three important bosses began to collaborate after they saw the interventions on their children and grandchildren,” adds the judge. But something more structured needed to be added to the Protocol. In particular for the possibility of change your name and residence without being able to be traced. In the absence of this possibility, in fact, it is difficult to look for work, get healthcare and even enroll children in school without the real danger of being tracked down by their mafia families of origin.
«A courageous bill», defines it as the Attorney General of the Court of Cassation Piero Gaeta, which starts from “concrete prejudice to the psychophysical integrity of the minor” and considers, when this prejudice is effective, the mafia family as a mistreatment family”.
A «third way in the fight against the mafia“, second Chiara Colosimo. «A new approach that goes alongside traditional ways: collaborators of justice and witnesses of justice”.
A proposal «designed above all for women who, from within mafia families, choose to rebel against violence and criminal culture to protect themselves and their children and aims to attack the mafia by acting from within family units».
An alternative, also explains Rando who, as vice president of Libera, had taken care of many of these women on the run. «A path for women victims of violence and for children forced to grow up in criminal contexts, which allows them to choose a path of freedom and normality and which strikes organized crime from within».
An effective tool, because, explains prosecutor Gaeta, «the removal of the minor from the mafia family is, for the latter, a genuine failure. It is much more than a long prison sentence, it is much more than a large confiscation: it is the cultural failure of the military network that ensures its strength, it is the cultural failure, for the mafia family, of the idea of omnipotence that cultivates its descendantsis the failure of the attractiveness of the mafia family model compared to the traditional family model. It is, in short, the defeat from a cultural point of view of the invincibility of the mafia family as such. It is the State that wins, essentially, managing to push away.”
