(from correspondent Elvira Terranova) -He doesn’t cry. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t speak. The child of about 3 years old, no one knows her age, is locked in his silence. He was found alone in the desert and arrived on a boat in Lampedusa by a boy not yet of age. Upon his arrival at the hotspot, the young man explained to the mediators who welcomed him that he did not know the identity of the child, that he did not know who he was, but that he had found him alone, during the journey into the desert to leave for the Sicilian coasts . “I couldn’t let him die alone in the desert, so I took him with me and we made the journey together…”, said the boy, explaining that the child never spoke a word to him either. Save the children and the Italian Red Cross take care of the little boy lovingly, with psychologists who try to get him to open up. But so far without success. No one knows what traumas the unnamed child suffered. The solidarity competition to take the child into foster care has already started in Lampedusa, at least until a family to adopt him is found.
It is up to the Juvenile Court of Palermo to decide what to do in the next few hours with the ‘child of the desert’. The Court must verify, as required by law, whether there are relatives in the area and, secondarily, whether there are concrete requests for foster care by “suitable subjects”. At that point the Court appoints a guardian and the child is placed in an age-appropriate facility. The judges will then have to ratify the reception measures. If necessary, as explained by the Juvenile Court, “an urgent intervention by Child Neuropsychiatry is also envisaged”.
The child, in the meantime, is in the hotspot in the area reserved for little ones and single mothers. The psychologists and Save the Children workers don’t abandon him for a moment. But he never cries. And he doesn’t interact much with others. “It’s as if he lives in his world and doesn’t want to leave it,” they say. “We are taking action to give this child maximum protection within a few hours, place him in a suitable structure and see if there is anyone who wants to foster. The little one has very strong emotional stress, he is unable to verbalize” , Claudia Caramanna, the Palermo Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office, explains to Adnkronos.
The Minors’ Prosecutor ‘Her attention is attracted only by female figures’
“His attention is attracted only by the female figures, but he is unable to interact – says the magistrate who looks after the child – The stress is so strong that it is necessary to intervene immediately”. Subsequently, the child will be handed over to the Child Neuropsychiatry service “to take care of him immediately” to “give him stability for greater balance”.
In short, the unnamed child “needs protection measures to be activated immediately, so far we have only had the information from Save the Children, we are waiting for more data”. Meanwhile, the child who doesn’t laugh or cry remains in his silence.
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