"Guys, watch the news afterwards." This is the message posted by the 13-year-old who yesterday stabbed his teacher at a middle school in Rome, shared by him shortly before the attack in a chat frequented by other young people. Il Messaggero reports this and also shows on its website a video filmed by the boy himself while he is in the bathroom before entering the classroom. In the footage, the 13-year-old props his phone on a cycling helmet and films himself: he tucks two knives into his trousers, puts on military green gloves, grabs pepper spray and puts on airsoft glasses. He then leaves the bathroom and walks down the school corridors towards the classroom, where teacher Isabella Marsilio is seated at her desk during the lesson. This is where the attack takes place. The footage shows the teenager approaching the teacher and striking her on the left side.
Meanwhile, the Carabinieri have conducted a digital search of the 13-year-old's mobile phone — the boy who yesterday attacked a teacher at a middle school in Rome's Centocelle neighbourhood — as well as his mother's phone, on which the credit cards used to purchase the knives had been saved. Investigators also carried out a forensic copy of the devices. The aim is to reconstruct the contacts made by the minor before the attack and to determine whether anyone may have incited him to assault the teacher. As part of this investigation, the social media profile the young man had opened, which had four followers, will also be analysed. The 13-year-old had in fact started a social media livestream before attacking the woman.
According to information obtained, the boy is still hospitalised at the Umberto I hospital, where he has been since yesterday morning. The Carabinieri yesterday sent an initial report to the Juvenile Court Prosecutor's Office. The 13-year-old is not criminally liable, but as standard practice, prosecutors will formally open an investigation file, presumably for the offence of grievous bodily harm. Proceedings will be initiated against the young man to access re-educational measures, which exist at various levels: from placement under social services supervision to placement in a residential community.
Psychotherapist: 'We need to talk about it and understand, but at home, not on TV'
"We need to talk about it and understand, but at home, within the family, not on television," given that "we adults have normalised violence: in politics, wars, the killing of children and individualism. This perhaps has an influence. We behave as if death were something normal." This is the general commentary on yesterday's stabbing of a teacher by a teenager in Rome, offered by psychotherapist Matteo Lancini.
Lancini, president of the Minotauro foundation, spoke at Pordenonelegge to present his latest book. "Italian juvenile law is highly advanced," he explained. "People come from all over the world to study it, every week from Japan and the United States, much like what happens with the nursery schools of Reggio Emilia. I am not justifying anything; on the contrary, the law will proceed to help this boy," he continued. "This boy will not go on with his life as if nothing happened. I believe there is today an enormous difficulty in dealing with the complexity arising from our inability to accept that a thirteen-year-old who commits such an act is a thirteen-year-old who has not expressed his emotions in any other way." However, "let us not forget that the preferred way of expressing distress in recent years is directed against oneself." The true emergencies facing "neuropsychiatric services worldwide are linked to male social withdrawal: the well-known phenomenon of hikikomori is the equivalent of an eating disorder." Lancini then dwelt on the subject of suicide: "We don't talk about it, and then we say that young people are killing themselves because of AI. Instead, we should talk about it at school and in the family, since it is a way of expressing distress." These forms of violence are "emotions that have found no language," less devastating ways of expressing oneself. We keep thinking that "if we talk about suicide then young people will do it, but it's the opposite," he concluded.
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