A twelve-year-old from the province of Reggio Emilia was beaten twice by her other classmates. The first time the beating was interrupted by a priest. The second time by teachers from the nearby school. The beaten girl returned home without telling anything about what had happened to her and did not ask her parents for help. However, the scenes of his beating had been filmed by peers present at the crime and were making the rounds on social media, so much so that the victim’s parents discovered everything through these videos that had gone viral. Therefore they accompanied their daughter first to the hospital and then to the police station to file a complaint.
The victim’s parents say that when they learned of their intention to press charges they received a lot of intimidation not to proceed in this direction by the minors involved in the situation. At the same time, it seems that almost no parents of the children belonging to the pack have come forward to apologize and provide support.
These stories of violence and bullying among very young people are unfortunately frequent today. In this story, however, there are some new aspects compared to other similar stories. Here the violence was committed within an all-female group. The girls fought while the boys filmed with their smartphones. It is certainly not a sign of gender equality when girls beat each other like their male peers. Rather, it is a sign that violence is increasingly normalized. That even among girls, bullying, which has almost always been a phenomenon based on hostile words and dynamics of exclusion, today instead occurs with no holds barred. You can also beat someone you want to humiliate, causing bruises and fractures on their body, as happened in this case.
The desensitization towards violence, no longer considered to be condemned but almost to be exalted, is also demonstrated in this story from the desire to take it back and spread it on social media. And it is striking that the victim did not want to tell her parents what had happened to her and that she was then treated and given attention only after the fight she suffered went viral.
Finally, it is truly worrying that the adult community has not rallied around the victim’s family. There can be no real growth if there is no village to support that growth. And here the families seem not only absent and fugitive, but even conniving with their bully children. The risk is that those who grow up no longer have references to understand what is good and what is bad, what can be done and what – on the contrary – not only cannot be done but is a crime, if you decide to do it. This story must force the community in which it occurred into a process of collective awareness, in which children and adults return to being a team and not being a pack.
