In San Donato Milanese there is a garden named after Federico Barakat, “victim of filicide”. It rises not far from the place where Federico was killed, at the age of eight and a half: the health and social center where the child was brought for a “protected meeting” with his father, who instead killed him with more than 30 stab wounds leaving him to agonize for 57 minutes and then took his own life. It was February 25, 2009 and even today that story is not yet over. The Supreme Court acquitted all the defendants, the two social workers and the educator on duty in the center, but after that sentence Antonella Penati, Federico’s mother, appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. On 11 May the ECHR rejected the appeal with which the woman had asked for the condemnation of the Italian state for not having protected Federico’s right to life and now Penati has asked the Grand Chamber to reopen the case. Because it is no longer just Federico and his mother, but that sentence concerns “all Italian and European childhood” and “all Italian and European mothers”, as Antonella Penati said today during a press conference at the headquarters. of the Italian Women’s Union, to ask that silence on this matter does not fall.
Antonella Penati had repeatedly denounced the instability and danger of her ex-husband. Frederick himself, his mother recalled, did not want to see that father, who had changed over the years, prey to increasingly strong mental disorders and which had made him more unstable every day. Instead, she had been defined as “alienating” and “hyper-protective” and in the name of two-parenthood those “protected” meetings had been arranged. But Federico was not protected by the man who later killed him and for the moment of his death no one was held responsible. In a week, on 6 September, the receiving body of the ECHR Commission, made up of five judges, will decide on the request for reopening the case. The chances that he will decide in this sense are not many but, as Penati recalled, the hope is that “the importance of taking a position will be understood” and reviewing what he has defined as an “unacceptable” sentence which in fact “affects all children entrusted to the state “. In case of reopening, Penati stressed, it would no longer be five judges but all the judges of the Member States who would decide.
“There is a flaw in the system because it cannot be permissible for a child to die while in the hands of state officials without anyone responding,” lawyer Federico Sinicato said during the conference. “The meetings with the father should have been safe. The ECHR has adapted to the evaluation expressed by the Italian State, an evaluation of absolute extraneousness with respect to what has happened” and in Europe, he added, “there is no protection for the minors who are placed in the hands of a public body. We must build a protection at a European level for minors entrusted to the state “.
Antonella Penati has also repeatedly stressed the importance of training not only social services but also the judiciary itself as regards the protection of women victims of violence and their children, also hoping for a meeting with the Minister of Justice Marta Cartabia.
Federico’s mother’s appeal is also supported by the DiRe network (Women on the Net against Violence). For the president Antonella Veltri “Federico is the emblem of how much minors can be exposed to violence by abusive men who use them to take revenge against their companions” but also “of how much the institutions continue not to apply the Convention of Istanbul, ratified in 2013, and in particular article 31 which exists precisely to avoid these situations, so that the safety of women and their children is always evaluated in the regulation of parental relationships “. Elena Biaggioni, criminal lawyer and referent of the DiRe Advocates Group, recalled that “to date no one in our country has taken responsibility for Federico’s death”, hoping that the Grand Chamber will review the matter, “establishing the responsibility of the States in assessing the risk of suffering new violence to which minors and women are exposed “.
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