“I’m disheartened.” He has the look of someone who feels the weight of defeat, this man who, with his head bowed, shows dozens and dozens of legal papers. And, while he tells them, he shakes his head and repeats: “There’s a lot of talk about stalking, but who really protects the victims if on the other hand the person who stalks you should be helped from a psychiatric point of view?”.
The person accused of the persecutions is a woman. One of the last times she found herself in front of her, in the Tavernola car park, she collapsed to the ground, she took a blade out of her bag and began to injure herself. She and she screamed that she had been thrown down the stairs by her ex-husband. She was then taken to hospital. He was interviewed for a long time by the police. But what, at first glance, might have seemed like an attack against the woman was instead the tip of the iceberg of a story for which no one seems to have a solution. Because despite a complicated separation, now the man who is the victim of a real nightmare is not only exasperated, but he is afraid. And he raises a topic that is recurring with alarming periodicity: the absence of measures and structures that can defend those who are targeted by people with psychiatric problems.
Not that the institutions have not been affected by the problem. On the matter involving the two ex-spouses from Como, both over fifty (since psychiatric pathologies are involved, there is no need to go into too much detail about personal data), the Como Public Prosecutor’s Office has, for example, opened several criminal cases: for threats, for defamation, for stalking (in the rare case of a woman in the role of the accused). But, apart from a criminal decree condemning a financial fine which dates back over a year now, for a few months now there has been a succession of requests for dismissal. The reason? The woman was recognized as having significant psychological distress, which leads to the exclusion of her ability to understand and will.
Whoever tells his nightmare today had fallen in love with the woman who now haunts him over thirty years ago. Then, exactly thirty years later, the marriage ends. From one day to the next the discomfort from which the wife was evidently suffering explodes. And the lives of both are literally turned upside down.
But the already sad process for the end of a thirty-year relationship becomes dramatic when, towards 2021, the woman, learning of a new relationship with her ex-husband, begins to implement a series of actions that end up filling over a dozen – abundant – of formalized complaints to the Carabinieri and the police.
First the accusation of defamation, with the woman telling anyone about a husband who frequents prostitutes and who even had relationships with minors (it goes without saying that all the accusations have proven to be sensationally false). Then the threats to her ex-husband’s new partner, with the sign of having her throat cut. Then other indirect threats addressed to the sister of the ex-spouse’s partner: either the relationship ends or “I’ll kill your sister”. Then the damage to the two’s cars (a couple of raids filmed by the internal camera placed by the insurance company): blows from a sledgehammer, scratches, broken glass. This winter the escalation.
The escalation
First, an ambush on her partner, with the woman allegedly throwing herself – an investigation into what happened is underway – onto the bonnet of her “rival’s” car. Then the double ambush on the ex, all within the space of a week: in the first case with the ex-wife throwing herself in the middle of the road to Cernobbio, simulating an investment (only to then run away when the ambulances arrived) then the fake attack at the Tavernola car park.
«They all say their hands are tied – the man comments, visibly exasperated – I understand that he needs help and that if a person is not capable of understanding he cannot be charged, but then how can my partner and I defend ourselves ? What if one day she becomes violent? What can we do?”.
Justice has no weapons, psychiatric help centers cannot intervene without the patient’s consent, communities are crowded. “And in the meantime the victims continue to be afraid.”
