«One boy was particularly restless: he was tied up and beaten until he was beaten to death. In the morning I almost didn’t recognize him anymore… His half-confidences were enough: I immediately called the family, outside of any official protocol, and I was able to speak with his brother, then with the psychologist. The boy, with our support, filed a complaint.” It may have been a coincidence or not, but «a few days later he was out, released from prison, and had withdrawn the complaint. I haven’t seen him again but I would like to know how he is.” Speaking to the Corriere is an educator who worked for years at the Beccaria juvenile prison, until recently. At night or on weekends when there were no educators or volunteers but only the agents anything could happen, and “fragments of truth were before our eyes…”. That is, swollen faces, bleeding lips, frightened or completely dull looks due to the psychotropic drugs: «Sometimes I entered the cells to eat on the beds with the boys confined to the infirmary, who did not have a refectory. I couldn’t have stopped there but I did, also to talk to them a bit. I also formally asked the management how it was possible to find it so often in the cells there was blood everywhere… They weren’t just acts of self-harm, from the half-confidences that the boys told me I could also guess something else. Yet I heard the management reply: “What the kids do is more serious”.
The educator continues: «I think there was a system of power that had a top police figure at the centre, surrounded by a group of agents who followed him. The idea of control and security also included a certain “agreement” with the stronger prisoners who somehow, in exchange for favors, contributed to calming down some situations; the transition from esprit de corps to herd spirit is short.”
One Monday morning, in 2022, the educator arrives at Beccaria. A foreign boy who had been in the infirmary for months calls him from his cell, “protected” because he had already been targeted by other prisoners for the type of crime he was accused of. The educator realizes that on Saturday evening he was suddenly taken by the officers to the floors, into a cell. «He had a livid face and eyes that I will never forget. Not without difficulty I found a secluded place to talk to him, but he didn’t know Italian. He dropped his trousers: he had swelling and unmistakable, terrible signs… I took him straight to the doctor straight away, but was then scolded very heavily by some officers. I should have done “other steps” first, they said, and that is to hear their version and evaluate what to do.”
Should he have kept quiet? The story then emerged in all its gravity: that boy had been tortured and raped in a gruesome way for hours by his cellmates, at night. «Who decided to put it there, in the wolf’s den? And how is it possible that no officer on duty heard the screams and heard the noises for such a long time?”. The educator reflects: «We educators were understaffed, half of what we should have been, and many agents were not prepared to relate to the kids, they only knew how to use muscular strength (since 2018 the specific training of agents for the juvenile sector, ed). I believe I did my duty, when I could, I tried to bring out all the things that didn’t add up. But unfortunately I didn’t succeed, I didn’t have the overall vision.” The hypothesis of a somewhat conniving role of some educators does not surprise him, “some have very close relationships with the agents”. However, his thoughts go to the boys: «They only said half words, unfortunately. Perhaps they were being intimidated. Or perhaps in a closed environment like prison where all teenagers – even those who act tough – feel debased, nothing, the idea prevails, contrary to any re-educational logic, that suffering violence is in some way normal.”
