Fascinating report
From her modest office overlooking Palermo’s juvenile prison on the island of Sicily, Claudia Caramanna is working to strike the Italian mafia where it hurts most: the family.
Since becoming head of the city’s juvenile prosecutor’s office in 2021, she has opened hundreds of cases aimed at stripping organized crime figures of parental responsibility and placing their children with foster families, distant relatives, or protected communities, she said.
The goal is to sever “the genetic code passed from parent to child that keeps the Cosa Nostra alive,” she said, referring to the Sicilian mafia, adding that “children raised in mafia families don’t have the freedom to choose a life without crime.”
Caramanna is also trying to persuade mothers — many of whom are raising children alone while their partners serve long prison sentences — to leave behind organized crime.
A draft law aimed at providing state support to children and mothers who leave mafia families has just been filed in the Italian Parliament and will be officially presented on January 15 as part of a first step in a potential legislative process.
“The law is urgent,” said Senator Enza Rando, who sits on the Italian Parliament’s Antimafia Commission, adding that she hopes gaps in the national law can be addressed by the draft bill. Mothers and children who escape the mafia currently have no right to state protection and are exposed to reprisals, she said.
Caramanna’s effort builds on juvenile judge Roberto Di Bella’s “Free to Choose” (Liberi di Scegliere) campaign, which started more than a decade ago in the Calabria region — the base of power for the ’Ndrangheta, now Italy’s most powerful mafia syndicate.
Supported by Italy’s main anti-mafia organization, Libera, Free to Choose helps settle children and their mothers in secret locations away from their parents, severing the blood ties and loyalty that define mafia organizations. Typically, parental responsibility may be revoked when a parent has been convicted.
The program — which was initially condemned as an effort to deport children by detractors, including some clergy — is now funded by the Italian government and the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the main body governing the Catholic church in Italy.
One woman who fled her ’Ndrangheta husband for protective custody said in an audio statement recorded by Libera and provided to OCCRP that her “ordeal began” when she fell in love and became pregnant.
She felt a “growing worry” that her children might “take the wrong path,” she said, adding that her decision to leave was “driven by maternal instinct” and the desire to “raise my children as normal, honest kids.”
“As a wife, I was treated mostly like a slave. I had to endure continuous humiliations without ever being truly taken into consideration. I was always put aside … Regarding my children, until he was arrested, the final word was always my ex-husband’s.”
“To all the women who are thinking of taking this step, I say: Don’t be afraid. Disobey the mafia. Disobey these families.”
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