Claudia Caramanna has only been in her role for two years and her work is already attracting unwanted attention.
A year ago, an anonymous letter with a hand-drawn cross was sent to his home. Then, in March of this year, a group of thugs broke into his office at night and turned everything upside down.
For his own protection, Caramanna now has a police escort.
He assumed his position as prosecutor of the Palermo juvenile court in July 2021. Many of his investigations have focused on the children of mafia bosses and drug traffickers.
In some cases, it has asked that they be separated from their families and placed in foster care. These interventions have made Caramanna the target of enraged mafia clans. But, she says, separating children from their criminal parents is sometimes the only way to keep them safe.
“We did not take this decision lightly,” Caramanna tells the BBC in his office in Palermo. “On the contrary, it is the last solution, when there are no others.”
Caramanna’s work in Sicily is another attempt to protect children from being drawn into the dangers of organized crime. She joins the Liberi di Scegliere (Free to Choose) project in the Calabria region, which began in 2012 and was the subject of the film “Children of the ‘Ndrangheta”, released in 2019.
Only a relatively small number of children and adolescents have been separated as part of these programs: around 80 minors and 30 family units in Calabria, since 2012.
But these cases have sparked a broader debate about the welfare of children in mafia families and what the state should do to help them.
Some critics worry that the trauma of living apart from their families is worse than the risks of staying put. “Public opinion is quite divided,” says Ombretta Ingrascì, a researcher at the University of Milan specializing in the sociology of organized crime families.
Even in Palermo, where people are well aware of the danger of growing up within the mafia, some believe that the family unit must be preserved at all costs.
Caramanna was especially surprised when she was publicly criticized by a local priest in Palermo, who made it quite clear that he considered a child’s place to be with his mother and father.
“I wanted to talk to him in person,” says Caramanna, “to explain to him that it is not a form of punishment.” She emphasizes that children are not removed without good reason: “I will never tire of saying that this only happens in unavoidable situations, such as when a parent is a drug dealer and the child becomes involved [en el crimen]”.
Growing up within the mafia
What is commonly known as “the mafia” actually encompasses many different clans in Italy, the most notorious of which are the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania and the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. Growing up within these organizations shapes children’s lives from the beginning.
“There is a myth that the mafia does not involve women or children, but that is not the case,” says Franco Nicastro, a journalist from Sicily who has written about mafia culture for decades. “Children are prepared for a life of crime; it is part of their education.”
Both parents can, for example, educate children about mafia culture and its values, such as omertà (a code of silence, that is, one should not talk about the organization or its activities).
In many families it is possible for the son to follow the father into the organization or for the daughter to marry another mafia family, strengthening strategic alliances.
The father may be more directly involved in criminal activity than the mother, but both parents tend to play a role in the transmission of crime.
“The mother can sometimes justify the violence and explain why it is significant or important,” says Anna Sergi, a professor of criminology at the University of Essex, who has analyzed the impact of the removals in Calabria.
In his research, Sergi cites the case of a young teenager who helped his father hide weapons and, in the words of the court, considered that it was a father-son activity, something that was “time shared with his father, part of their special relationship.
Mafia culture can shape a child in other lasting ways, too. It can contribute, for example, to high levels of truancy and dropouts in certain areas of Italy.
Nicastro points out that, according to data provided in 2022, at least 21% of school-age children in Palermo have dropped out of school or do not attend classes regularly. “It’s very worrying,” he says. “I don’t think you can find figures like that anywhere else in the Western world.”
By adolescence, he says, many of these children are already involved in criminal activities such as drug trafficking.
Dropping out of school can be especially damaging since teachers may be the only ones offering mafia children a different view, Nicastro says, pointing to the words of 20th-century Sicilian author Gesualdo Bufalino.
“He said that you can defeat the mafia with an army of teachers, because they can teach values that the child would not learn from his family or the society that surrounds him,” he says. “You have to start from early childhood.”
There are also physical dangers. In 2022, according to local press reports, in Sicily there were at least 18 cases of children admitted to hospitals due to drug overdoses they had found in the family home; one was only 13 months old.
As they grow older, some people may be drawn to the certainty of life presented to them, Sergi suggests, with predetermined roles and close-knit family and social networks.
“Looking from the outside, we can say there is no freedom. But I would say it’s a little more complicated than that. It may seem like the trade-off is worth it.” They can then perpetuate the cycle with their own children.
Ombretta Ingrascì, whose book “Gender and Organized Crime in Italy” examines the role of women in the mafia, emphasizes that women who want to escape often face the same challenges as other victims of abuse.
“It’s very important to contextualize the experience of these women who are moving away from families that can be psychologically and physically abusive, because they need to be able to trust the state and they need access to women’s services,” she says. “But in southern Italy there are few centers for women victims of violence.”
He has discovered that many people who have grown up in mafia culture cannot imagine an alternative life. “They think this is normal,” she says.
He recalls one interviewee who was genuinely perplexed by some of his questions, as if the family’s drug dealing were a typical line of work. “She talked like I wasn’t normal.”
Those who wish to leave may be alienated by their families who disapprove of their disloyalty. They may face threats of violence or death if there is a risk that they will snitch on other members.
The freedom to choose
Under Italian law, a child can be separated from his or her family when there is strong evidence that the parents do not comply with the legal requirement to provide adequate care and education, such that their behavior harms the child’s well-being. Inducing a child to commit criminal acts is an example of this.
This was the legal basis of the Liberi di Scegliere, established in Calabria, southern Italy, by the president of the region’s juvenile court, Judge Roberto Di Bella.
“The key is to give these children the opportunity for redemption, to show them that a different life is possible,” says Giorgio De Checchi, national coordinator of the project.
In one case presented in Sergi’s research, for example, a girl in her teens was separated from a ‘Ndrangheta family and relocated outside Calabria.
“This solution appears to be the only viable one to avoid retaliation,” the court concluded, “to save the girl from an inevitable fate and at the same time allow her to experience different cultural, emotional and psychological contexts.”
The court hoped this would allow him to “free himself from his parents’ conditioning.”
De Checchi emphasizes that each case is unique and the court weighs many factors before making a decision. The court may, for example, choose to revoke the parental rights of one parent and not the other, if one shows more willingness to change.
Sergi’s analysis of court rulings found that the father’s parental rights were most often revoked, while mothers tended to be given second chances if they were willing to offer the child a crime-free life.
In all cases, mothers were allowed to maintain some contact with the child. If there are relatives who are not part of the mafia, the court may try to release the children to them.
Most importantly, children are offered psychological and educational support to guide them towards a better path in life.
Deal with critics
Caramanna’s work in Palermo attempts to take a similarly careful and compassionate approach. Separation of parents and children is the last resort.
“Every child has the right to live in his or her nuclear family, unless that conflicts with the right to grow up physically and psychologically healthy,” he says.
In almost all cases, they try to offer the mother the protection and security to leave with the child. “We ask these women: what do you want for your children? The alternatives are usually prison or death,” says Caramanna.
“If the mother refuses, we check if there is someone trustworthy in the family circle who has distanced themselves from the criminal life,” he adds. “And before proceeding, social services and the police carefully monitor the situation.”
Even if the child is removed from the family home, parents will often be granted visitation rights, as long as the child agrees to see them.
And the court’s decisions can be overturned and the family reunited, if the parents break their ties with the mafia. This may seem unlikely, but both programs have seen notable success stories of children and entire families breaking free.
“For every child who does not choose the path we would like, there is at least another who does,” says Sergi, based on his analysis of the Calabria juvenile court.
De Checchi points to the family of a mafia boss who had been imprisoned for serious crimes. His son was also convicted, while his daughter was placed in foster care.
It could have been a heartbreaking story and yet the son continued studying in prison and after serving his sentence decided to live an honest life, while the daughter came of age without being drawn into crime.
“Even his mother decided to change her life and accompany her children in this distressing but necessary reconstruction process,” says De Checchi.
The daughter now has a job and the son is considering studying law. Even the father, who had initially opposed the court’s decision, now appreciates the “rebirth” of his family, De Checchi says.
“We’ve seen a lot of families like this,” he adds: people who have been given the opportunity to choose a new way of life away from crime. “Because an alternative path must always be open in any civil society worthy of the name.”
* Alessia Franco is an author and journalist who focuses on history, culture, society, storytelling and its effects on people
*David Robson is a London-based writer. His most recent book is “The Expectations Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life,” published in early 2022.
You can read the original article (in English) on BBC Future
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cz9895n3em2o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-10-01 04:00:07
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