OfLaura Tedesco
Mothers Francesca and Valentina, father Andrea: «We don’t want revenge, but truth and justice»
«We are not here looking for revenge, we want truth and justice. Archive the killer bacterium, it would be killing our children of Citrobacter again.” The embrace between mothers Francesca Frezza and Valentina Lago, their eyes streaked with tears in the corridors of court of Verona they bring the calendar back to June 5 years ago: «In 2019 little Nina died and Jacopo was brain damagedwe now appeal to the judge but above all to the man, we trust that he will put a hand on his conscience…”.
«An existence ruined forever»
Valentina is at the Scaliger courthouse with her husband Andrea: «Our Jacopo will celebrate his first 5 years in a few days — the young father lowers his gaze —. Because of that terrible bacterium that devastated his brain while he was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit in Borgo Trento, he has never been able and will never be able to see, walk or talk to us. An existence ruined forever, and that of our family with him… Here, for Jacopo, for other newborns so severely damaged by Citrobacter, for the little ones like Nina who didn’t make it to survive, clarity and justice must be achieved.” The appeal of the parents, who ask judge Luciano Gorra to «reject the request for dismissal presented by Verona Prosecutor’s Office for the most part (except for the last two in chronological order, for which instead the indictment will be discussed in a preliminary hearing, ed.) of the children, almost a hundred of which about ten very serious and/or fatal, affected by Citrobacter in Verona from 2019 to 2020″, is that “whoever made a mistake on the skin of our children should pay. We believe that reopening the investigations rather than archiving them by locking them in a drawer without fully ascertaining the truth is a duty towards the entire population, especially in light of the additional onesvery recent episodes of new colonizations found on three newborns on May 5th.”
The hug in court
In 2019, in the Tin of the main birth center in Venetomothers Francesca and Valentina both had their premature babies hospitalized in the same room: «We remember everything as if time had never passed… — they sigh — At the time, no one at the Verona hospital spoke to us about the Citrobacter, no one informed us that our children could be in some kind of danger, we knew nothing, they didn’t tell us anything…”. Nina, Francesca’s little girl, didn’t make it; Jacopo, the second son of mother Valentina and father Andrea, was irreversibly brain damaged: 5 years after their meeting at Tin, they have now found each other again and embraced in court, uniting in their request to “reopen the investigations” on which the investigating judge Gorra reserved the right to decide. On the opposite front, the defense team assisting the 7 doctors, technicians and hospital managers who ended up under investigation for manslaughter and negligent injury, continues to make a wall insisting that the case is closed on the basis of the maxi expert report ordered by the prosecutor, proving Citrobacter to be “an endemic bacterium”.
The compensations
Mother-courage doesn’t agree and addresses the hospital leaders directly: «If you had done from 2018 to 2020 what you now claim to have done for the last three cases of colonization, our children would be with us today… I think of the days spent in a department that I thought was excellent. I think about how this could have happened – observes Frezza -. I think of the many, many differences between hospitals in Italy. I think of the suffering caused to us and who knows how many others. But there will soon be a time when I will give back to Nina the dignity that you have denied her so much.” Jacopo’s parents agree: «Families left alone like ours, with a boulder on our hearts that will accompany us for our whole lives. For Jacopo there was no justice, for Jacopo there was no compensation, only abandonment and loneliness. But we – mother Valentina and father Andrea assure — we don’t give up and we won’t give up. Our son is our strength.”
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June 1, 2024 (changed June 1, 2024 | 4:44 pm)
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