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," Borrelli denounced , "a woman evicted from her home and beaten while seeking justice. We cannot leave our neighborhoods at the mercy of juvenile gangs and crime." Councilor Zazzaro promised urgent action to return the housing to its rightful owner, but the situation requires more: a thorough overhaul of the public housing system, currently 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.
The article describes a very serious and worrying situation, and I wonder how it is possible that in a civilized country a 79-year-old woman can find herself in this condition. Violence and indifference are truly unacceptable.
It is sad to see how the most fragile people are often neglected by society. Filomena deserves immediate help, but it is difficult to believe that things will change without a real commitment from the authorities.