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Silent violence against older women – Alice Facchini

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Silent violence against older women – Alice Facchini

“I got married young and had three children who are grown men today. My husband has been beating me, always. Even before marriage, even during pregnancies. No one has ever known: he never leaves marks, he hits me on the head, where he is not seen. He did not want to maintain relations with our families. He never got on well with his parents, but he didn’t want me to hang out with my parents or my sisters either: he was afraid I would tell something and maybe they understood. So little by little we got lost, just a few phone calls for good wishes and nothing else ”.

Paola (the name is fictional, like that of the other women who are told in this article), seventy years old, is among the thousands of elderly women who suffer violence every year in Italy, often by a partner or a family member. Physical assaults, psychological pressures, economic blackmail, up to feminicides: in many cases, violence already develops in the early stages of the relationship, but it can also be the result of aggressive attitudes that worsen with aging.

“Often they are women who have carried on their relationship in a period in which violence tended to be justified, if not considered as a possible corrective method”, explains Laura Saracino, responsible for the reception at the Casa delle Donne in order not to suffer violence. Bologna. “At the time there was a very different cultural humus. Today women are more aware and are less afraid to report, also thanks to the presence in the territory of anti-violence centers, which did not exist before the end of the 1980s ”.

In recent years, requests for help from women over 65 have been increasing: in 2021, 1,367 calls to the anti-violence hotline numbered 1522, over 8 percent of the total, compared to 796 in 2018. Yet, the phenomenon is still submerged.

Istat, in its survey on violence against women, takes into consideration only the age group from 16 to 70 years, so for older women it is necessary to refer to the statistics on the more generic category of elder abuse. “Often, when we talk about violence against elderly women, we refer to mistreatment by family members, carers or in retirement homes”, explains Mariangela Zanni, president of the Veneto Center for Women’s Projects. “Little is said instead of violence in intimate relationships”.

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It is a generation that grew up with a very traditional division of roles

One of the most comprehensive research on the subject, conducted by the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, analyzed 1,207 cases of femicide in Italy between 2010 and 2019, focusing on the type of violence suffered by the victim and the reason that prompted the murderer to act, and comparing what happened to young women (aged 15 to 24), adults (aged 25 to 64) and elderly (aged 65 to 93). It turned out that 27 percent of the victims were over 65.

Among the violence that precedes femicide, the most common in all age groups is controlling behavior, followed by stalking among adolescents and adults, and physical violence among the elderly. As for the triggering causes, jealousy and non-acceptance of the end of a relationship are more frequent among adult women, while among the elderly, murder is often associated with the presence of a physical or mental illness. “The question of care is central,” explains Laura Saracino. “In our society men are not used to taking care of each other: when the partner gets old or gets sick, they are not always able to sustain this new balance and sometimes they react with violence”.

According to a study published in the journal Current psychiatry reports, which also takes Italy into consideration, homicide-suicide among elderly people has specific characteristics and occurs especially in sick women or women with a disability. “This is an extreme gesture, sometimes linked to the desire to take away the suffering or to the fear of what will happen when the caregiver”, Explains Patrizia Zeppegno, professor at the University of Eastern Piedmont, one of the authors of the research. “Murder-suicide is a rather masculine prerogative: women are more used to taking care of others and enduring even very heavy situations”.

Reporting is more difficult

The reasons why it is more complex for older women to report violence are different: the inability to ask for help due to a disability or isolation, the fear of being estranged from the family, the need to be cared for by the partner, who often it is the only one caregiver. Then there is the question of economic dependence.

It is a generation that grew up with a very traditional division of roles, which entrusted the man with the task of working and the woman with the care of the house. “How can I report and leave home if I don’t have a pension and can’t even afford to pay a rent?” Explains Saracino. “And then there are the costs for drugs, for therapies or for a caregiver, in the event that it is a non self-sufficient person”.

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Furthermore, for elderly women, leaving the home, entering a protected structure and living with other people can be particularly difficult and tiring. Even when someone does, they often think about it. “I was hosted for a few days in a protected structure: my husband hit me in the head and the wound required many stitches,” says Silvia, 75. “My son was frightened because he was called by the carabinieri: he gave false testimony in front of the magistrate, denying any form of violence and accusing me of sexually compromising behavior with other men. He told me that if I didn’t withdraw the complaint I would never see him or my grandchildren again. In the end I decided to return ”.

Seeing oneself uprooted in the last years of life is very painful and often unbearable

When they learn about the violence, the children can take different positions: some take the defense of the mother, others join forces with the father, or go away and pretend not to know. Not infrequently, they resist the possibility of the mother leaving the house.

“The beatings my husband received last time were so serious that there was an official complaint from the hospital: he fractured my eye socket with a fist,” says Tosca, 78. “Despite the sentence, my sons have always accused me and sided with their father, welcoming him into the house even though he had a removal order. Only my daughter is trying to help me, even though she is very angry with me and exasperated by my inability to react to the situation ”.

Sometimes it is the children themselves who commit violence. “We have intercepted many cases of this type”, says Arianna Gentili, head of the shelter of the Difference Woman anti-violence center in Rome. “The perpetrators of violence are mainly men between 40 and 50 years old: they often do not have a job, or they have separated and returned to their mother, or they have an addiction and commit petty crimes. They ask for money, they demand a pension and, when they don’t get it, they become violent: we have met women with destroyed houses, broken wardrobe doors, broken windows ”.

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For these women, facing a path out of violence is even more complex, because it means going against their own child. “At the base there is a strong sense of guilt,” says Gentili. “Often they do not want to be helped in the first person, but ask to help the child to ‘change’. What we try to make them understand is that a person cannot be forced to undertake a path of change, if there is no will ”.

Today there are no specific protocols for cases of violence against older women. There are no financial support tools and the only possibility, for those who are eligible, is to apply for the citizenship income or the freedom income, recognized without age limits for women victims of violence to help them undertake a path independently . The economic question is added to the emotional and psychological complexities: “Seeing oneself uprooted in the last years of life, in a new place, without ties, is very painful and often unbearable”, says Eleonora Lozzi, psychologist and psychotherapist of the Veneto Center. “The system is not structured to accommodate older women”.

In 2019 the Veneto Center for Women’s Projects launched Si-cura, which deployed specific tools to combat violence against women over 65, followed in 2020 by the Dalia project. “The biggest difficulty is helping these women to escape violence while remaining at home,” explains Lozzi. “The job is then to support them in finding their own survival strategies, offering them a safe space to go to when they need to talk to someone.”

In these cases, the anti-violence centers work in close contact with the social services and associations of the territory, to rebuild a family and friends network around the woman that supports her. “We must move towards a society that is not based only on the traditional family model, but which also provides alternative possibilities, such as projects of mutual aid or cohabitation between people with different backgrounds and ages”, concludes Lozzi. “We need to change the paradigm. For older women who want to get out of violence, one element is fundamental: the community ”.

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