DAPHNE Project

ITALY

 

Report presented at the second EBU Daphne Seminar /Athens

Understanding violence: this certainly is the goal that those who want to know in-depth the world of violence against women must set themselves. It is a world which one cannot come to terms with.

Too big is the burden of suffering it entails. Too serious, even at times irreversible, is the damage it brings about with its numerous aggressions. Its possible manifestations are so varied as its facets are numerous and all equally dangerous.

Gender violence – violence of men against women and young girls – was almost invisible until very recently not because it was kept hidden – quite the contrary- but because it was so strictly connected to and rooted in tradition, dominant values and laws/legislation so as to go unnoticed as if it were a natural event.

It would suffice to recall that the Italian Code of Criminal Law justified and legitimised violence – even strong – against women.

Article 587 “honour killings and personal injuries”, which provided for dramatically reduced penalties for “anybody causing the death of his spouse, daughter or sister, at the moment/when discovering an unlawful/illegitimate sexual relation and in a “fit of anger” produced by the offence (that has been) done to his or his family’s honour … or causing the death of the person who has an illegitimate sexual relation with his spouse, daughter or sister”, was repealed in 1981 only.

“Shot-gun wedding” was abrogated only in 1981 as well. Rape crime used to be deleted and the perpetrator not to be punished if he married the girl he had raped. As far as collective rape was concerned, the crime was deleted for all the persons who had participated in it if one of them married the girl concerned.

Moreover, law 66 dates back to 1996 only, which deeply modified the previous legislation. The main change being that rape is no longer defined as a “crime against morality and morals” (as it was in the old Rocco code) but as “a crime against a person”.

Data on violence against women and children in Italy are scarce. Yet, you only have to observe what is reported in the news: Husbands who beat their wives, fathers who punish their daughters, doctors who don’t restrict themselves to examining their female patients, university teachers who propose more than studying, lawyers who are ready to agree with a female customer on a reduced bill (on certain conditions), professionals who set up traps for girls through advertisements in the newspapers, paedophiles who do not respect children.

All this makes us understand how widely spread and complex violence is. Statistics on homicide show that guns, knives and ropes are used by men to kill women.

It is not intelligent of those who love and respect women not to recognize that violence – not only physical violence – is unfortunately real. It would be as if those who are healthy denied illness, those who have a degree denied illiteracy or those who have enough food denied famine.

If surveys and research on abuse against women and children in general are scarce, surveys on violence against visually impaired people are non existent. There is no literature on the matter in Italy, as far as we know.

In May 2003 the Italian Union of the Blind’s President decided to entrust the Equal Opportunities commission with the carrying out of the EBU Daphne project in Italy. Commission members, after having thoroughly examined the information material on the project, accepted to personally implement the project, even though they were aware of the very short time available.

First of all, we sent the questionnaire out to all local branches of the Italian Union of the Blind for women members to fill it in. At the same time the questionnaire in Italian was also put on the Daphne website so that computer-literate visually impaired women could fill it in by themselves. The Board also made available a privileged phone line to be called when necessary: in order to have clarifications or further information on the project, to fill the questionnaire in, etc.

Many women made use of the above line, a lot of which did so to stay anonymous. More than 460 questionnaires were sent back to us duly filled in, quite a great number if we consider the short time and the delicate matter. Most of the women expressed some criticism of the questionnaire, which - though keeping its quantitative orientation/structure - could have been clearer and more detailed.

It was in June that we were more active in implementing the project. In fact we dedicated ourselves to the most appealing and qualifying part, namely discussion groups and seminars. It was a very involving experience, hard for certain aspects, something you cannot be indifferent to. It was characterized by in-depth sharing, collective growth, greater awareness that went well beyond our expectations. It’s difficult to find the right words to report the great suffering and pain that some of the stories we were told revealed to us.

But let’s do this in an orderly fashion. We divided the territory of our country into three zones: north, centre and south. During the discussion groups we met about 200 women and we were able to talk with them for hours


We would like to talk in detail of the ten peer groups. It wasn’t easy to gather women willing to share their difficult experiences. Participants in the meetings were women of different ages, culture and status but with a common denominator: visual impairment. It was never easy to tear down the walls of mistrust and initial fears. Many persons told us they were convinced they had never faced violence or abuses. At the end of the discussion groups, though, women said that thanks to these meetings they finally understood that during their life they had passively suffered because they never recognized some behaviours as psychological or social violence but thought that everything was right, everything was normal.


A woman, whom we’ll call Elsa, said: “I have faced much violence in my life. Nevertheless, I have always tried to convey a different image of myself, I have built up appearances. Now I feel that it would be important for me to talk with you of these experiences but I am afraid, yes I fear your judgement. Everybody knows everybody, and I am afraid of what people could say about me…”. Elsa was reassured, though, and encouraged, so she told us her story.

We got to know of very serious forms of violence perpetrated within families, parents who - as they do not accept their daughters’ disability - confined them to bed for years, or segregated them to their own house. This happened above all in small centres where everybody knows everybody and having a disabled child is regarded as shameful, amongst non-well educated people.

Unfortunately, it still happens and doesn’t only belong to the past. In fact we were told similar stories by 25 year-old persons. We would like to report the most significant stories.


A thirty-one-year-old woman, whom we’ll call Emma said in a trembling voice: “ I faced all sorts of violence when I was a child. Both my mother and my father regularly beat me. I was confined to an attic for many years. My parents did not want me, they never accepted me. They were ashamed of this blind, imperfect, useless and different daughter. They even refused to feed me. My sister only thought of me and brought me some bread. Whenever she was nabbed… she was beaten too. More than once did my mother throw hot water over me on purpose…I still have scars from scalds on me… My mother probably was probably mentally disturbed … My father raped me. One day some social workers sent me away from home, I stayed at an Institution run by nuns until I was 20. In the end I was able to live on my own thanks to my disability pension. I found a job as a switchboard operator. I am computer-literate: I was asked to instruct one of my colleagues and I was told that I would work with him at the data processing centre… He managed to acquire and use his new skills, I was left at the switchboard. So I resigned two years ago. I have a dream: I would like to be a teacher. Probably I am capable of violence as well: if you fill up a vase with vinegar you will not be able to offer honey.” Emma lives on her own, she has a guide dog, her only friend , her only mate, but “She is a victim of my violence” Emma said to us.


Angelica’s story is a bit different. Both she and her brother witnessed violent quarrels between their parents: “I don’t like talking about myself, I had come here to listen, I didn’t think I would be able to open up but the others have given me courage. I have never known what harmony is, I don’t know the joy of a happy family: I have always seen my parents beat each other and quarrel. Maybe only now - at an elderly age and in bad health conditions – they have given up hurting each other. My mother has always seen her marriage as a failure, so she made every effort to prevent me from having my own family, oppressed me in any possible way, conditioned and abused me so much that today I am 45 and alone. I am afraid of repeating my mother’s experience. She interfered in every relationship I had, with her hands as heavy as axes, a continuous, subtle violence that destroyed me…If I had been more independent… I should have done what my brother did: leave home, but it’s not so easy for blind people to do so.”.

But the story that struck us most was the one of a young woman we can call Giulia: she is about 35 years old, totally blind and has a guide dog. She is married. Her husband recovered his sight thanks to surgery. They have three children and she is expecting the fourth. She told of more or less serious experiences of violence suffered by her or by other women. She spoke with difficulty from the beginning, she suddenly stopped, the members of the group thought she had finished, but in a whispering voice, trying not to cry, she told of her experience: a family friend, who usually attended their home (a trustworthy person), abused of her children. This happened not only when he had to look after them, when Giulia and his husband had urgent and unexpected engagements, but even in their own home. While Giulia was doing the housework or cooking, this neighbour, many times invited to dinner, took advantage of the trust put in him and abused of her children. Giulia said that she and her husband had realized that only two years later: “My children repeatedly performed gestures they could not know, they made strange drawings. I did not realize anything, I cannot believe it… how many times we left our children at his house. He is married, with children…I feel so unbearably upset. If I had not been blind, this wouldn’t have happened. If I could see, he would never have dared. For many years I have been treated by a psychologist, but the pain and the sense of guilt are too strong to overcome. Now I am expecting another child. I know I was wrong not to denounce him, but both my husband and I were afraid of being deprived of the custody of our children. We were afraid of being regarded as unable to look after them… so he is still free”

Rita says: “I am totally blind. A few years ago I was in a park. I was sitting on a lawn together with my partner, a partially sighted young man. We were talking. In the park there were also many mothers with their small children playing near us. It was full of people. Suddenly something hit my back. At first I didn’t understand. The same happened to my partner. Shortly after we realized that a small group of boys had surrounded us and were using us as real/sheer targets. They threw pebbles at us. I was frozen still, unable to utter a single word or to move. Paolo stood up, wanted to confront the hooligans. His male pride, his anger, his sense of powerlessness urged him to do so. He only received lots of pebbles on his glasses together with the boys’ loud mocking laughs. I recall his challenging cries, the pain, I recall how sorry I felt for him… but better still I recall the anger I felt about the indifference all those mothers showed. None of them did something. They didn’t even try and call somebody who could help us. A Palestinian student did help us: he went with us to the first aid and told us strange words made up of encouragement and yet full of pain, words of somebody who probably had known violence and pain since childhood. I will never forget those boys’ laughs, the abuse they hurled at us, their heavy-handed remarks on our disability….”

During the four meetings which took place in southern Italy, deeply-rooted, questionable convictions and local traditions were discussed at length, namely premarital virginity and “sense of honour”, which marginalize women and keep them in chains. They are completely dominated by their fathers or their husbands. The problem of economical violence is particularly felt: there are cases of families that rob their visually impaired relatives of the money they earn or their disability pension. There are witnesses of women, generally elderly people, deprived of their own money by their husbands.

Almost all participants coming from southern Italy had memories of unpleasant events that had happened inside their family, which were made up of blackmails connected to loss of autonomy, need for dependence, prohibitions, underestimation and belittling.
Several of them thought it was natural to have experienced abuses, especially the most fragile and those who most need love and respect. They feel that – in a way -being disabled entails living these terrible experiences.
Many of them told of the countless problems with their families, which they had to face up in order to manage to live a normal life, feel pleasant sensations, have a love story or important relationships, marry, prepare for responsible motherhood.

Maria is 62 years old and told us about her marriage: “He was sighted. I was pressed to take such a step by my family. They were convinced it was the best thing for me to do. I was a blind woman. Who would look after me? I was not so sure, but I listened to my family’s advice.
I thought that time could mend everything. I made a big mistake: my husband has never respected me. I was completely independent at home. I cooked, my house was always tidy. I did not work outside. We had a daughter and she has problems of sight too. When Laura was a child and we used to go on holiday to the seaside, he started to leave us alone and went sailing. Not long after that happened, I discovered that, while we were alone suffering the heat on that terrace, he went sailing with other women. He did not want any relatives or friends to come to our house: I had to ask his permission a week in advance to invite my sister. This hell went on for 14 years, with privations, loneliness, illusions. My parents, especially my father, told me to bear. When my father died, I plucked up courage and sent my husband away. I started to work and earn. I had much satisfaction. After my husband I had two other partners, but it is all over now. My last partner was partially sighted and he, not only discriminated me, but he always made me aware of my blindness and never had scruples in being unfaithful to me. My daughter had similar problems: her sighted boyfriend’s parents did never accept her, they made her life impossible. They persuaded him to leave her. It was a traumatic experience for her, the logical conclusion of a terrible period of psychological violence.

Several cases of violence suffered by younger women, the so-called daughters of school integration, were also reported. In this case, it is the psychological violence perpetrated by teachers or in any case, by people acting within the school. Such violence is aimed at discouraging the continuation of studies, belittling the abilities of blind female students.

Most of the young women stated they managed to overcome these difficulties, but they lived periods of deep depression and lost their self-respect. The girls are reluctant to tell of experiences of violence and their difficulties, due to both their shyness and their fear of being considered inferior to others. There is a wide-spread tendency towards a so called camouflage. They want to deny at all costs the integration problems, forms of discrimination, petty violence and serious violence, they want to deny the difference, they run after an equality, which does not mean equal opportunities, but is a sort of tenuous, insignificant, improbable standardization.

Roberta, for instance, who loves to chat on the Internet, hides her problems of sight. When she tells of her problems, she is immediately isolated. Boys tell her she is an exceptional person, but it is impossible to start a relationship with her, because she is blind. She said: “- Those of your kind can be only respected – they say to me. I feel humiliated. They do not consider me as a woman , but only a disabled person. Sometimes I fly into a rage and answer: -Look, you can try and pick me up too, you know! -
It could seem silly or foolish but I feel this as some sort of violence. I am not accepted, I feel refused, marginalized, discriminated!”

“Also partially sighted women encounter problems”, said Lisa. “I have to lie, pretend not to have sight problems in order not to be marginalized or refused by men. Sometimes I ask my friends for help, sometimes I give up. When I talk of my problems, in fact, boys dismiss me. Prejudice, discrimination and refusal are very hard for me to bear. They are sort of an unbearable violence. It’s nasty when they ask: “What about you? No driving licence? Why?” Partially sighted persons are submitted to many kinds of violence because they are suspended in some sort of limbo where blind people regard them as privileged and sighted people don’t understand whether they have real problems or simulate a disability they do not have.”

Blind women are victims of oppression and violence of all psychological kinds also at work: insinuations, innuendo, malevolent and destabilizing hints aimed at instilling doubts in them about their professional skills. There are also explicit allusions to compulsory employment quotas from both employers and colleagues: “You have been hired only because a law obliges us to do so…you are another tax our company has to pay..” “You already get a disability allowance, why do you “steal” a job that could be vital for a family man?” “it may even be better to be blind, so you’ll never be unemployed”, “Now also disabled people have a job; not only must we maintain them, now we must act as a wet nurse for them at work!”, “But what can a person produce, who is not able to see?

These are recurrent sentences in the stories we were told, words full of contempt, ignorance, resentment, words hurting more than a whipping, words that are repeated daily in many cases.

Many cases were also reported of blind workers that are hired and then literally left in a corner with nothing to do, continually moved from a room to another, placed in dark offices, in cellars even (they are told that after all they do not need light), left without a room for months, sometimes sitting in front of the toilets, abandoned to themselves, with no technical aids necessary to carry out their work.

Many blind persons told us that they did not want our association to take action. These workers are often afraid of retaliations, small revenges, petty blackmail from employers.

Belittling, not greeting, talking of people as though they were objects, denying the victims’ presence, taking advantage of any short absence to change the situation, giving them ridiculous nicknames or referring to them by using expressions like: “The blind one, the dumb one, the deaf one, etc; all this happens every day. Each insult echoes previous insults preventing them from forgetting, which the victims would like to do but the aggressors refuse to allow. MOBBING, i.e. psychological terror at the workplace, means moral abuse and much more: it’s an aggression perpetrated in a very delicate field of vital importance to human beings, all the more so if they are disabled: work, professional skills, in short the social aspect of each of us.

For this reason mobbing is to be considered particularly dangerous and damaging. When workers become mobbing victims, they are robbed of their dignity of social individuals. Many experts maintain that in Italy there are often cases of double mobbing. This is related to the particular role that families play in our society. Families in fact are much more involved in and interested in their members’ problems, even professional ones.

So, Italian mobbing victims generally speaking don’t need to desperately look for help, because they already have it. The victims’ destructive energy can unburden within the family but it can reach such a high level as to exhaust all familial resources.

Whenever this happens the mobbing victim’s situation comes to a head. Protective, generous families suddenly change attitude, stop supporting them and start on the contrary – to become in spite of themselves sort of a threat to the integrity and health of family units, which now think first of all of protecting themselves and then to counter-attack. This is of course an unconscious process because no family members will be aware of having stopped helping and supporting their relative. So, victims bombarded in the office are also involuntarily deprived of their families’ sympathy and help: mobbing – as a consequence – will start in the workplace and go on – with different modalities – at home. And, what will happen if the victim is a disabled person who is not totally autonomous and/or independent?

Another theme was also underlined: safety. Even in Italy there are two different sorts of cities, so to say: the city of men and the city of women. At least according to a survey on victimization at least half of Italian women has faced some sort of sexual harassment, not counting verbal abuse, shadowing, unwelcome remarks. Probably all women have been at least once in their life victims of such behaviours.

Rapes or attempted rapes are generally perpetrated by family members, friends, acquaintances in the victims’ or their friends’/relatives’ homes.

Verbal or physical abuse, on the contrary, happen in public or semi-public spaces: streets, means of transport, bars, discos, as well as workplaces and study places. For women, then, the borders between private and public life are very thin, and dangers are transverse.

Women are taught to be more afraid of what goes on inside than of what goes on outside. So they spontaneously enact self-defensive behaviours, which limit - in comparison with men – not only their freedom of movement but also their wishes and choices. In our country, after all, messages conveyed by the media on one hand show the picture of (portray) female vulnerability and weakness; on the other hand they reaffirm an adequate behaviour model, pointing out the possible transgression by the victims.

Participants in the discussion groups stressed that the invasion of their physical space hints at their sexual vulnerability. Two aspects have been underlined: 1) on one hand women are never taught to react and defend themselves; 2) on the other hand their real or presumed weakness refers to women as sexual objects, men’s preys.

Participants feel danger as “male”, connected to both stealing (bag-snatching, pick-pocketing) and sexual abuse/aggressions. For this reason women feel ill at ease whenever they meet male groups or perceive male steps behind them. Several participants were victims of bag-snatching or pick-pocketing. Most of them declared they had suffered sexual harassment on means of transport, which are identified as very dangerous places where purses or other valuable objects are stolen and sexual harassment of various kinds is perpetrated quite regularly…. Almost all… young girls stated that they had modified – following sexual harassment – the way they dress and put into action avoiding, self-defensive strategies.

It was also stressed that nowadays women are still connected to men by a twofold link: a woman needs a man to protect her from other men. This is widespread, common, interiorised and, so to say, not at all innocent because it limits women’s freedom to go around and choose.

Peer groups kept us really busy and led us to profound reflections. Together with the questionnaires they also highlighted issues and problems which were undoubtedly known but which one did not want/ could not, or maybe was not able to make emerge with all their significance.

To tell the truth, there already exists a real network of blind and partially sighted women in Italy. It is made up of the provincial committees’ members of the 101 local branches of the Italian Union of the Blind and of the members of its 20 regional committees on equal opportunities between men and women. We have names and addresses of the women taking part in them. There has been also a discussion list for a few months, its name is kaleidos_land through which women – and men – have the opportunity to discuss subjects related to equal opportunities and problems concerning relations between men and women. Almost all persons in the list are visually impaired but there are also sighted people. We have often discussed violence, its various facets, also taking what is published on Kaleidos as our starting point. Kaleidos is a female-side-of-culture monthly magazine produced and published by the Italian Union of the Blind. Women in the mailing list as well as participants in peer groups and self defence training courses are available to be included in the network. They would like it to become international, though, and join those already existing in other European countries. The networks’ task should be to promote more unitary policies. It is vital in fact that information is correct and widely circulated. It should not concentrate on emergencies or, even worse, on the extraordinary or odd case, but on the strategies helping women to know laws, human and social rights, and mechanisms so enabling women to correctly fight in order to ensure that their rights are implemented and respected.

As far as self defence training seminars are concerned they resulted to be a real success. Not only did women who had participated in peer groups ask to be included but many others wanted to take part . First of all a psychologist helped the participants to identify the concepts of violence, self help and self defence, as well as the relevant different possible emotional responses. More than valuable was the contribution made by Mr Bruno Carmeni, our self defence instructor/trainer, whose abilities and sensitiveness were far beyond our expectations (and of the women participating in the seminar). Mr Carmeni was seven times Italian judo champion and had already been a trainer for visually impaired people in the past. His demonstrations were far beyond mere judo lessons. He explained to the participants the difference between answering to violence and dominating violence. He showed how important it is to have not only a psychological preparation but also a physical preparation enabling to correctly channel our energies aimed at a healthy life. He underlined how vital it is for visually impaired people to acquire a real psycho-physical balance, without which no clever move can be winning in case of aggression. He taught women of different ages how to escape a few grips/holds, how to react in case of attacks from behind, how to fall down. Participants declared that they had realized that self defence is possible but at the same time asked the Italian Union of the Blind to establish more structured real self defence courses. The were happy with our choice to have a male instructor who in their opinion was to be preferred to a female one. They said they appreciated the Daphne Project on the whole and wished it wouldn’t stop, because we have still far to go.

Both in peer groups and in self defence seminars we talked at length of the so called good practice. It was stressed that good practices are born of the cultural attitude of those who feel responsible and able to search their own lives’ events in order to find the competence which is later to be used to the benefit of the social network we all belong to. All of us, In fact , have common and Individual needs which have to be taken account of before designing useful and functional structures. To this purpose gender policies play a very important role. This is really good practice, namely to make a collective effort to bring about the cultural change capable to remove prejudices and stereotypes. It is vital to find the roots of violent behaviours In order to break the vicious circle of violence passed on from one generation to another. Young people must be shown new itineraries leading to true self realization, personal identity, character building aiming at high quality inter-personal relations, man-woman relations included.

We would like to stress how important it is to carry on with awareness raising campaigns targeted at schools, ensuring that teachers, parents and social workers are involved in preparing coherent education plans. Such plans should provide students with information 1) on violence perpetrated, 2) on different disabilities, 3) on the respect of diversity, and with training to the denouncing of violence (reporting perpetrators to the police) as well as including in daily school activities all the politically correct cultural stimuli aimed at overcoming stereotypes, insecurity ,aggressiveness and behaviours leading to violence against women. Nowadays the key element of the concept of masculinity is connected to physical strength, the will/right to assert a presumed superiority to be obtained.


The school must play a major preventive role to encourage the coming into being of a democratic society based on mutual respect, peaceful living and shared responsibilities. This applies not only towards the students (boys and girls) but also towards the whole environment the school belongs to, namely through urging families to grow together and cooperating with other political and social bodies.
The new primary role played by women within modern society disconcerts men. Nobody told them the reasons for these changes. They have not succeeded in managing the transformation that had a great impact on them.

This incomplete -mainly cultural - process led to a real crisis of male identity based on more and more frequent new insecurities, aggressiveness mingled with fear for the new that often causes uncontrolled behaviours. It is vital, therefore, to commit to the building of a “self” able to resist the temptation of resorting to violence.

We have In Italy praiseworthy initiatives such as “Telefono Rosa” a free- phone help-line, which women who are victims of violence can call to have psychological and legal support. There are too few initiatives such as these, though, and none specifically designed for disabled women. It is true that violence is terrible for any woman, on the other hand women with disabilities have to face many more difficulties, as the EBU Daphne project has revealed.

Thinking of the laws and situations mentioned earlier on, things have certainly improved. Nowadays the media are interested in initiatives such as ours. In fact even RAI Parlamento, an important Italian radio station, invited us to participate in a programme where we had the opportunity to speak about the EBU Daphne Project. Well, much has been done although we have still far to go.

One last remark. Women’s ability to cooperate amongst themselves, to work and fight together, is the key to making magical utopia a shining reality, a concrete hope of creating a human-scale world, a world where women and men can really live on an equal footing.


Luisa Bartolucci
Vanda Dignani