Just a day after being told that her sister Giulia was dead, Elena Cecchettin was interviewed on live TV outside the family home in Vigonovo, a small town close to Venice. Floral tributes were tied to the railings behind her, and a torchlight procession attended by thousands of well wishers was under way. But Elena was not looking for sympathy. “Don’t hold a minute of silence for Giulia – burn everything,” she said. “We need a cultural revolution to ensure that Giulia’s case is the last.”
On 18 November 2023, Giulia Cecchettin, 22, became Italy’s 105th victim of femicide that year. Her body, with more than 70 stab wounds, was found wrapped in black plastic bags in a ditch close to a lake north of Venice. Filippo Turetta, her ex-boyfriend, confessed to killing the biomedical engineering student, who was just days away from graduating.
Prosecutors on Monday asked for Turetta to be jailed for life for voluntary manslaughter – aggravated by premeditation – kidnapping, cruelty, stalking and hiding a corpse. A verdict is due on 3 December.
Cecchettin might have remained a face behind a number – her case, like most other femicides in Italy, warranting only a few column inches in the newspapers. But Elena’s eloquent appeal, which included the condemnation of “a patriarchal society steeped in rape culture”, shook the national conscience, triggering thousands to protest across the country.
“I don’t know where the courage came from,” Elena said in an interview with the Guardian. “I just know that I thought of Giulia, and needed to use the moment of visibility to tell things how they are. There are too many people, legitimised by a series of factors in society, who feel they can have the power over somebody else’s life.”
One year on, that feeling is still raw. Since Giulia, 106 other women have been killed by a man. In the vast majority of cases the suspect was either a current or former partner. Recently, a 13-year-old girl died after falling from a balcony, allegedly pushed by a boy, 15, who was later arrested.
On Saturday in Rome, more than 150,000 people took part in the annual protest about violence against women, holding banners urging: “Let’s disarm the patriarchy.” Machismo, they say, lingers in Italian society.
Their anger is amplified by the incapacity of Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government to fully grasp the issue, a failure made clear last week when the education minister, Giuseppe Valditara, asserted that patriarchy no longer existed. The comments were made during the launch in parliament of the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation, set up by her father, Gino. Valditara also linked the rise in sexual violence towards women to irregular immigration, with Meloni later expressing her agreement with him.
Elena, 25, criticised the minister’s comments on social media, saying: “Giulia was killed by a respectable, white Italian man,” while also asking: “What is the government doing to prevent violence?”
Elena, who is studying for a masters in microbiology at the University of Vienna, has used interviews and her social media platform to try to change the narrative around femicides.
On the morning after Giulia disappeared, she woke up early to finish an assignment due that day. It was around 8am when her brother Davide called to ask if she had heard from their sister, who the evening before, accompanied by Turetta, had gone to a shopping mall to buy a dress for her graduation.
“Knowing that he was with Giulia, I told my brother to immediately call the police,” Elena said. “I was terrified of Filippo, and had a feeling that I would never see her again.”
A roadside surveillance camera captured Turetta hitting Giulia, who had tried to escape before being forced back into the car. Turetta was arrested in Germany on the same day the body was found. He told a Venice court last month that he planned to kidnap and kill Giulia over her refusal to get back together with him, and then commit suicide. He said he had drawn up a “things to do” list.
The relationship had lasted about a year before Giulia ended it in August 2023. Elena told the Guardian that the “control and manipulation” had started early on, with a fit of jealousy after Giulia said she was going to meet a male friend she had known from high school. He had never previously been physically violent, she added, but as with many femicide cases, Turetta could not accept that the relationship had ended. He allegedly threatened to commit suicide.
“Giulia didn’t want to feel responsible for him killing himself over her, even if it would not have been her fault,” said Elena. “She was being manipulated, and tended to minimise the problem. This is why psychological abuse is underestimated – sometimes the victim doesn’t even recognise themselves as a victim, and as a society we always tend to blame the victim.”
As the tragedy was discussed on TV, Elena heard people blaming Giulia. “They asked: why didn’t she save herself? On the other hand, Filippo was being depicted as a good boy who could never hurt a fly. I found this absurd. The questions that should have been asked were: ‘Why wasn’t he educated? How did he arrive at this point?’”
The main task of the Giulia Cecchettin foundation was to “educate in order to bring about change”, her father said last week, as “gender violence is a collective failure, not just a private matter”.
The family is calling for the introduction of sexual and emotional education in schools. “It needs to start with children,” said Elena.
Since the foundation was launched, the Cecchettin family has been inundated with calls and messages, either from women, or their relatives, who are “in dangerous situations”.
Elena said that this was a further sign of the “frightening institutional gap”, also citing the cuts in funding to women’s refuges over the past decade. “We would like to help everyone, but for goodness sake, we don’t have the tools. Self-funded associations are essentially doing the work. The government doesn’t seem to care if women are safe and secure.”
Giulia had dreamed of becoming an illustrator for children’s books. “She was such a good person, almost free of malice, but not in the naive sense. She always tried to see the good in everything, and was positive about the future,” said Elena.
Elena is also positive that society has the power to bring about change. “But we all need to assume responsibility to resolve the problems, and that means arriving at zero femicides.” Until then, “for Giulia, burn everything”.
