«It is difficult to say what this 11-year-old girl is experiencing and has experienced – an age which, especially in the modern era, still means not having distanced herself from the cultural horizons of childhood – in a period in which we traditionally rely on other adult figures who should protect us. Here it is clear that the protection and safety dimension has disappeared. What the little girl suffers is the fact of having been let go, exposed to a dimension of risk for which she has already paid the price. The child, then, at 10 years old, if she had not lived in a context that was too compromised, she could expect to be protected. First of all from violence, from a person who was able to exercise a form of abuse without the intervention of protection mechanisms. And then pregnancy, another big topic. A pregnancy carried forward. We have to seriously ask ourselves how this little girl was able to live that long time.”
How much can an 11 year old girl actually choose to get pregnant?
«We don’t know this. It is not known to us. What that particular little girl could have understood, with her story about her, whether she could have made anything at all of what was happening and what was going to happen next. Including the fact that the child that would be born from this pregnancy she would not be able to know, grow, follow. What could this little girl have heard about what was happening to her? Surely an 11 year old girl has some tools to understand what is happening to her, but facing a pregnancy at 11 years old? She will have been able to build a very simplified representation of what was happening to her, of that ungovernable something that was growing in her body. This does not mean that she, for example, could not have been afraid or established an emotional bond with the child that she knew she would have fathered. We don’t know this. It’s quite surprising that this pregnancy was carried to term, yes. So we have to ask ourselves about the decision-making process.
If there is something that can cause trauma in the history of a human being, it is sexual violence. There are other forms of violence that produce devastating effects from a psychological point of view, but sexual violence, especially if practiced at a very young age, sometimes even produces the interruption of thought processes. A raped child is often no longer able to think, real delays in cognitive development are evident.”
What do you think of an alternative option, namely abortion in the fourth month?
«It could certainly have been assessed, pursuing the principle of the best interests of the minor. Apparently the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in this case could be an element of protection. But why? Because there wouldn’t have been all that time. Nine months spent in a situation that for a girl of that age cannot be totally thinkable. And what cannot be thought generates trauma. Trauma causes the subject to become symptomatic because it cannot be metabolized by the individual’s psyche. The traumatic event, thus, returns in various forms in the person’s life history. It doesn’t let him sleep, it presents itself in the form of nightmares, intrusive thoughts while awake, somatic symptoms, in some cases even phenomena similar to hallucinations. All this always because the subject is unable to metabolise that experience. So I ask myself: what will this 11 year old girl have felt, what will she have been able to think throughout her pregnancy?
If she failed, as is likely, to make what was happening to her thinkable, every day of that pregnancy was a trauma that, in layers, overlapped with each other. So I think reducing the time of that layering of trauma could have protected that little girl. This without mentioning the other events that she had to endure, such as the caesarean section and the forced abandonment of the child. It is natural to think that a different choice could be more protective for the minor. Except that a true analysis of the case can only be done with the subjective encounter with that particular girl.
It cannot be said in absolute terms that it was a bad choice to complete the pregnancy, but in the abstract, it seems more traumatic that way. I would start from the assumption that it is necessary to investigate where the choice to keep the child came from, which defines the entire horizon of protection.”
The case, given the age of the girl, is very delicate and particular.
«I have followed many cases, aged 14 and up, in similar situations. I wonder: if a 14 or 15 year old girl, much more structured than an 11 year old, cannot think of the fruit of violence that turns into a reality that is repeated every day, can an 11 year old girl do it?
I wonder if a possible interruption of pregnancy in the fourth month could be considered the same as a therapeutic abortion, in the unlikely event that the judicial system were to intervene and place protections around this former child who had to grow up too early . It’s a big question which includes respect for the laws. My experience leads me to express great confidence in our courts, where extraordinary people work who know how to take on great responsibilities every day. The surrogate institution acts as a prosthesis and supports. And it answers uncomfortable questions, including on the opportunity for this little girl to carry on with a difficult pregnancy. It would have been necessary. At least be able to ask yourself.”
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