She is left alone, homeless, with her face dirty with eggs and her bones shaken by a head trauma. At 79, Filomena sleeps on cardboard in her haberdashery in the Rione Toiano, after being forcibly evicted from her council flat in Monterusciello. That house was everything to her: modest, in need of renovation, but hers. A refuge that became unreachable when an illegal occupant forced the door taking advantage of her absence and kicked her out. From then on, for Filomena, the nightmare began.
Not only has she lost the roof over her head, but for weeks she has been subjected to the harassment of a baby gang. Continuous acts of vandalism, stones, firecrackers, eggs thrown in the middle of the night against her business. A gratuitous violence, repeated, which reached its peak during a visit by the deputy Francesco Emilio Borrelli and the councilor for Social Policies Titti Zazzaro: just as Filomena was telling her story, a new throwing of eggs and stones. One hit her on the head. She ended up in hospital.
“A national disgrace”, he reported Borrelli, “a woman kicked out of her home and shot while asking for justice. We cannot leave neighborhoods at the mercy of baby gangs and crime.” Councilor Zazzaro promises urgent interventions to return the housing to its rightful assignee, but the situation requires more: a profound revision of the public housing system, today held hostage by the logic of abuse and mafia control.
Filomena, like so many other invisible people, has been deprived not only of her rights, but of her dignity. And while she waits for someone to give her back what is hers, she remains there, in the aisles of her haberdashery, a silent witness of a city that too often forgets its weakest.
Article published on May 20, 2025 - 10:54 pm
