Giulia Cecchettin’s household awaits killer’s sentence in Italy

A verdict is anticipated on Tuesday in a homicide case that gripped Italy and sparked a heated debate on the difficulty of violence in opposition to girls.

Prosecutors have requested that Filippo Turetta, 22, be sentenced to life in jail for stabbing to dying his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin final November.

During the last 12 months an enormous quantity of element in regards to the killing has emerged, forming an image of an more and more anguished younger girl harassed by her possessive ex-boyfriend who refused to simply accept the tip of their relationship.

The case, which captivated Italians, has thrust the ideas of femicide, patriarchy and male violence into the headlines.

On 11 November 2023 Mr Turetta picked up his ex-girlfriend Ms Cecchettin, a 22-year-old biomedical engineering pupil from the Venice province, to take her looking for an outfit for her upcoming commencement.

Later that night, he stabbed her greater than 70 occasions, and left the coed’s physique on the backside of a ditch, wrapped in plastic baggage.

Then, he disappeared. For every week, Italians adopted the seek for the couple with baited breath. The invention of Ms Cecchettin’s physique on 18 November was met with an unprecedented outpouring of grief. The subsequent day, Mr Turetta was arrested in Germany. He readily admitted to killing Ms Cecchettin and was extradited to Italy.

To lift consciousness of the indicators of controlling relationships, Ms Cecchettin’s household lately shared a listing she wrote just a few months earlier than her dying, titled “15 causes I needed to break up with him”.

In it, Ms Cecchettin stated Mr Turetta insisted she had a “responsibility” to assist him examine, complained if she despatched him fewer emoji hearts than common, didn’t need her to exit with associates and wanted her to textual content him on a regular basis.

“They have been the everyday indicators of possessiveness,” Giulia’s father Gino Cecchettin instructed the BBC. “He would deny her her personal area, or demand to all the time be included. He all the time wanted to know every little thing she stated to her associates and even her therapist.”

“We realised later that she thought she was the reason for his ache, that she felt liable for it,” he stated.

In an 80-page assertion written from jail in childlike handwriting, Mr Turetta stated since Ms Cecchettin broke up with him he spent each day hoping to get again together with her. “I did not really feel like I might settle for every other final result,” he wrote.

In his police interrogation Mr Turetta confirmed that, on the evening he killed her, Ms Cecchettin had simply instructed him he was too dependent and needy.

“I shouted that it wasn’t honest, that I wanted her,” Mr Turetta stated, including that he killed her after getting “very indignant” when she tried to get out of the automobile.

“I used to be egocentric and it is solely now I realise it,” he wrote. “I did not take into consideration how extremely unfair that was to her and to the promising and fantastic life she had forward of her.”

Mr Turetta’s lawyer Giovanni Caruso has argued that his consumer needs to be spared an “inhuman and degrading” life sentence and pushed again in opposition to allegations that the killing had been premeditated.

“He’s not Pablo Escobar,” Mr Caruso stated – a line of defence Giulia’s father instructed the BBC made him really feel “violated another time”.

Tales of femicide routinely prime the information agenda in Italy, however Giulia Cecchettin’s story attracted an uncommon quantity of consideration from the beginning. The week-long seek for the younger couple gripped individuals; the revelation that Ms Cecchettin had been killed simply days earlier than her commencement moved them. Greater than 10,000 attended her funeral.

However it was the tearful and livid interview given by Giulia’s sister Elena, wherein she stated that Filippo Turetta was not a “monster” however “the wholesome son of a patriarchal society” which sparked a heated debate on male violence and gender roles in trendy Italy.

Elena’s phrases reverberated. Out of the blue, the patriarchy – an idea thought by many as arcane or irrelevant – was mentioned extensively.

“If you happen to’re a person you’re a part of a system that teaches you that you’re price greater than girls,” Mr Cecchettin instructed the BBC.

“It implies that for those who’re in a relationship every little thing must undergo you… and so a patriarch can’t be instructed: ‘I don’t love you anymore’, as a result of it goes in opposition to his sense of possession.”

In November, on the launch of a basis established by Gino Cecchettin in reminiscence of Giulia, Schooling Minister Giuseppe Valditara argued that the patriarchy now not existed in Italy and stated the rise in sexual violence was as an alternative “linked to the marginalisation and perversion that stems from unlawful immigration”.

The feedback sparked outrage. “Giulia was killed by a good, white Italian man,” Elena Cecchettin hit again. “My father has carried out one thing to forestall violence. What’s the authorities doing?”

Since his daughter’s dying, Gino Cecchettin has thrown himself headfirst right into a battle to show youngsters easy methods to deal with feelings and relationships, touring colleges to inform pupils his daughter’s story.

He additionally hopes that sharing Giulia’s personal voice and phrases might assist others – like one voice message she despatched associates wherein she sounds each exasperated by Mr Turetta’s insistence and riddled with guilt about his suicidal ideas. “I want I might disappear,” she says. “However I’m fearful he might harm himself.”

Elisa Ercoli of Differenza Donna, a charity that fights gender-based violence, instructed the BBC the messages had a tangible impression, together with her organisation getting a excessive variety of calls from mother and father who recognised comparable behaviours of their daughters. “We expect bruises are the issue however underhand psychological violence is the difficulty in lots of conditions,” she stated.

A authorities division has additionally stated that the nationwide anti-violence helpline skilled a surge in calls after Ms Cecchettin’s homicide, and that the variety of calls is now 57% greater than final 12 months.

However NGOs and opposition politicians are all demanding that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s authorities take concrete steps to forestall and punish violence in opposition to girls, akin to “affectivity classes” in colleges.

“What the Cecchettin household is doing is a grain of sand in comparison with what the federal government would have the facility to realize,” stated Francesca Ghio, a leftwing councillor in Genoa who lately publicly revealed she was raped when she was 12 – she stated the choice to talk out was impressed by the “power” of the Cecchettin household.

“They’re turning their ache into love and motion. We will’t simply stand by.”

Because the 10-week trial approached its finish, Mr Cecchettin stated he felt calm.

Remembering his “good daughter” who’s now a family identify, Mr Cecchettin stated he thought there could be a “earlier than” and an “after” Giulia’s homicide.

However whereas Italy has gained an emblem, his loss is incalculable. “I realised I can’t rewind life and time,” he stated, “and I realised that no one can ever give me Giulia again.”