“Ask forgiveness. My son Filippo will have to pay for what he did.” A few words, from one father to another father, entrusted to a WhatsApp message. Because in this story there is a girl who dies and there is a boy who will have to answer for a horrible crime. But then there are two families, and two dads.
That of Giulia Cecchettin, Gino, who lost a daughter, killed in the worst possible way on the eve of graduation and the adult life that awaited her, and who only had the strength to say «I don’t feel anger, I don’t feel anything. I think of my Giulia who no longer exists for me.” And then there’s the other father, Nicola Turetta, who from now on will have to live with a burden that is impossible to even imagine: that of a son who he believed to be perfect, “never any problems at school, never a fight”. It didn’t have to end like this. And instead.
Giulia Cecchettin, the sister: «Filippo broke the life of my family»
The message between the two dads
Instead Nicola had to see himself take his cell phone and write something to Gino. He expressed to him “maximum participation in their pain, and a strong closeness” said Filippo’s lawyer, Emanuele Compagno. And then his harshest words: «Forgiveness. Filippo will have to pay for what he did.” He couldn’t do it verbally. He had tried last night, at the torchlight vigil for Giulia in Vigonovo, to talk to Giulia’s uncle, Andrea. “I called him because I couldn’t see him in the square – explained the girl’s relative – We spoke for a moment on the cell phone: he burst into tears, he asked us to apologize, for forgiveness”. It didn’t have to end like this.
Because Giulia is dead, Filippo is in the hands of the law and justice will take its course. But the torment remains that no courtroom will be able to heal, and two families remain, divided forever by the blade of a knife but – in the paradoxes of pain – united by a “great dignity”.
Filippo’s father at the torchlight procession
This was told today by Filippo’s lawyer, who last night was among the three thousand who took part in the torchlight procession for Giulia in Vigonovo, in the Venetian area, together with the parents of his client. It is there that Nicola Turetta wanted to feel close to Giulia’s relatives. Without “formalism”, the lawyer Compagno further said, “which once again demonstrates mutual respect, as in the days before and also after Giulia’s discovery”. A girl who, as often happens when a young couple is born, had also become at home with her in-laws. A dear face. «We loved her – Nicola said yesterday afternoon, in a faint voice, at the door of their home in Torreglia, in the province of Padua – we got to know her well. She came here with Filippo. They seemed like a perfect couple. We are very close to this family.”
Today the Cecchettins telephoned Pomeriggio Cinque to say that, at this moment, they want to get out of the media whirlwind: «We have decided – said the father – that from today until the day of Giulia’s funeral we will not actively participate in any broadcast because for us now the moment of pain has arrived. We want to remember Giulia and focus on the beautiful things she gave us, without distractions. We will still have the opportunity to remember her after her, but until then we would like to stay collected for a moment.” The two families met last Tuesday at the Cecchettins’ home. They hugged. It was only the third day of searching for the two young men, there was hope. “I just wanted to go and get them both alive,” Nicola Turetta said last night. It didn’t have to end like this.
