He was arrested in Germany after a week on the run. The Venice Assize Court on Tuesday sentenced Filippo Turetta, 22, a student to life in prison who stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Giulia Cecchettin, to death in November 2023, a crime that shocked the country and relaunched the debate on violence against women. The court followed the prosecution's requisitions, excluding certain aggravating circumstances, according to the verdict read live by the President of the Court.
The biomedical engineering student in Padua, a university town about forty kilometers from Venice, had received at least 75 stab wounds. According to prosecutor Andrea Petroni, Filippo Turetta acted with “particular brutality” towards his partner before fleeing with the victim in his car. The body was found a week after his disappearance in a ravine near Lake Barcis, north of Venice, and Filippo Turetta was arrested the next day near Leipzig, Germany.
The accused's lawyer considered the request for life imprisonment excessive, saying that his client, who admitted the facts, was “not Pablo Escobar”, the famous Colombian drug lord. At the opening of the trial in Venice in September, he warned of a “media trial” and insisted last week on the absence of “aggravating circumstances” such as premeditation.
“I will never see Giulia again”
“I am already dead inside,” Giulia’s father, Gino Cecchettin, told public radio Rai last week. “For me, nothing will change. I will never see Giulia again. » The Cecchettin family created a foundation to develop awareness, support for women victims of violence and encourage equality and respect. “The only thing I can do (…) is to ensure that there are as few cases as possible like that of Giulia, that there are fewer parents having to mourn a deceased daughter,” explained his father.
The murder of Giulia Cecchettin has reignited the debate on violence against women in Italy, where the culture of flirting often goes hand in hand with macho and sexist behavior.
Thousands of people attended his funeral and his father implored men to “question the culture that tends to minimize violence from seemingly normal men.” Giulia's sister, Elena, called for a cultural revolution, urging us to “burn everything”, a message since written on walls and banners, often accompanied by the phrase: “Patriarchy kills.”
Of 276 murders recorded by the Italian Interior Ministry this year, 100 victims were women – 88 killed by a loved one, the vast majority by a partner or ex. A figure comparable to the 110 femicides out of 310 murders during the same period last year, including 90 women killed by a loved one. In 2022, 106 women were killed by a loved one, and 107 in 2021.
While denouncing historical discrimination against women and the absence of policies such as sex education in schools, some activists accuse the ultraconservative government of Giorgia Meloni of abandoning women. In November, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara sparked controversy by declaring that “patriarchy no longer exists” in Italian law and blaming violence against women on illegal immigration.
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