A project to separate children from mob families and rescue them from Italy’s largest mafia will be extended to organized crime groups in Sicily and Naples, the Ministry of Justice has announced.
The plan aims to prevent at-risk children from following their parents into a life of crime and break the cycle in which power is passed down through generations through blood ties and family loyalty.
“This is a historic moment in the fight against the mafia,” Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said on Tuesday, presenting the protocol signed by five ministers and the Catholic Church’s Italian Bishops’ Conference.
The Free to Choice scheme was created in 2012 By Roberto di Vera, a juvenile judge in Calabria.Home of Italy’s most powerful criminal organization, the ‘Ndrangheta.
The measures will now be extended to the country’s other two major organized crime hubs: Sicily, home of the Cosa Nostra, and the Camorra, stronghold of the Campania region, of which Naples is the capital.
Chiara Colosimo, head of the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia committee, said: “There are children who are being taught how to shoot at the age of eight. There are children who are dealing crack at the age of eight.”
Di Bella has seen cases of children whose mothers were killed to protect their family’s honor, but she also works with children who “still have a light in their eyes and want a different life.” He said he had done so.
Since the program began, approximately 150 children have been placed in foster homes and communities in secret locations across the country, where they learned about life beyond their families.
Di Vera said 30 mothers chose to pursue their children, and seven of them became state witnesses.
“Important mafia bosses have also become state collaborators to protect their children, including some who claimed they were doing it for their grandchildren,” he told AFP. .
Di Vera, now a judge in Catania, receives letters from imprisoned gang members thanking him for saving their children.
One letter seen by AFP was written by a mafia boss who decided to become a state witness.
“I remembered when I was a boy, and I saw my son in my mind’s eye… [and knew] I did the right thing,” the boss said.
“Parents are ready to sacrifice their lives for their sons. For the sake of my children and my wife, I suggested changing my mind.”
Family Minister Eugenia Roccella said women have an important role to play.
Modern popular culture and media often portrayed the wife as a gangster, issuing orders and wielding power behind the scenes while her husband was in prison. “But it is a fiction. It is impossible for any form of women’s liberation to exist in this culture, but rather something that violates and destroys women,” she said.
“Women’s role is to break the chain of cultural transmission through disobedience,” Rossella said. Specifically, she wants to remove herself and her children from the mafia.
