PESCARA. “With time you learn to live with it, to manage the pain, but I won’t deny that every evening when I put my head on the pillow my thoughts go to my mother.” This sentence hides the weight of 29 years of absence, shortcomings and silences. Giuseppe Delmonte he is one of the special orphans – or invisible victims – of femicide: it was July 26, 1997 when his mother Olga was killed on the streets of Albizzate, in the province of Varese, with 7 blows from an ax inflicted by her ex-husband. After a course of therapy and the desire to start again, Delmonte founded the association “Olga – Educate against all forms of violence”, of which she is now president, to promote the protection of rights and the fight against gender violence. Today she brings her story to Pescara, in the Tosti room of the former Aurum, on the occasion of the event “Special orphans, invisible victims of femicide”, together with the president of the Parliamentary Commission and deputy, Martina Semenzato.
How does Delmonte feel, years after the event?
«Today I can say that I am better, especially thanks to the therapy. I’m a different person than I was, but it hasn’t been a simple or quick journey. For about twenty years I lived in total silence, because immediately after my mother was killed I did not receive any kind of psychological support. I had to learn to survive on my own, without tools. Only later, when I achieved minimal economic stability, did I begin a real therapeutic journey.”
Why didn’t he get any help?
«Because the institutions simply weren’t there. We are talking about 1997, a period in which the term “femicide” did not yet exist in public and legal language, and not even the crime of stalking was recognized, which would only happen many years later. Domestic violence was often downplayed or relegated to a private matter. Today something has changed, but a big open wound remains”
That is to say?
«The children of murdered women continue not to be seen, not really taken care of. Just think that there isn’t even an observatory dedicated to them, so we don’t know how many there are.”
What has improved and what is still missing?
«A law has been introduced to protect orphans of feminicide, and it is certainly a step forward. But it is a law that only works if you know it and ask for it. If you don’t apply, the State doesn’t look for you, doesn’t intercept you and doesn’t accompany you. And it is precisely for this reason that we felt the need to be born as an association: to provide information in schools, but also training aimed at magistrates and law enforcement agencies.”
Please explain better.
«There is great territorial inequality. A femicide that occurs in a large city is handled differently than one that occurs in a small town. It is recent news that, out of 21 million euros allocated, only 3 million were actually spent on orphans resulting from feminicide. Not because there is no need, but because those resources are not intercepted. If you don’t know they exist, you can’t use them.”
What are the most serious shortcomings?
«There is a lack of global care for families. One cannot think, for example, of not offering psychological support to maternal grandparents, who after losing a daughter find themselves having to raise traumatized grandchildren. It is an enormous responsibility, which comes at the moment of the deepest pain. I call it the “life sentence of pain”. And then there are the children, who remain in the shadows: no one really wonders what happens to them after their mother is killed.”
What kind of children and teenagers are they?
«They are defined as “special orphans” because their mourning is different from all the others: they do not mourn just a mother, but a mother killed by her father or partner. They often come from years of witnessed violence, psychological and physical abuse. All this produces serious consequences: eating disorders, adaptation difficulties, even depression. They are children who carry an enormous load on their shoulders, in Italy it is estimated that there are around three thousand of them.”
Let’s go back to her. He was 19 when it happened. How did you deal with daily life?
«At that time I was under guard, because there was a real fear that my father could kill us children too. On the day of the funeral I was supposed to leave for military service, but I was prevented from doing so precisely because of this situation. In the meantime I had to find a job, out of necessity. My brother and sister helped me financially: we supported each other to survive.”
What was the most difficult psychological wound to deal with?
«What destroyed us was the cruelty of the gesture: seven blows of the axe. Faced with such extreme violence my mind reacted with dissociation, it was the only way to protect myself. I didn’t want to talk about it and I didn’t want to remember. My brain erased everything, even the beautiful memories I had with my mother, and I worked all day to not think about it.”
Has the pain gone away over time?
«It never goes away, you just learn to deal with it. But there is no comparison to what I felt before: a week after the event I had very dark thoughts, I won’t hide it.”
And what happened next?
«The shame has arrived. When I met new people and they asked me what my parents did, I lied: I said they died in a car accident. But they are wounds that don’t stay buried forever, sooner or later they resurface.”
Did this happen to you too?
“Yes. After the end of a relationship I fell into a phase of depression. I thought that was the cause of my discomfort, but in therapy I understood that the real issue was the trauma, never processed, of the past.”
Is that when you decided to found the association?
«The project was born when I realized that, going to schools, the kids were very interested in my story. So I understood that something more structured was needed, a continuous presence, also because many young people don’t even know the concept of legality.”
What would you say to someone experiencing a situation of witnessing violence?
«Today there are more tools than in the past, we no longer live in the 90s when it was forbidden to even talk about it, but I always say that it is essential not to look the other way. Even knowing that someone is suffering violence and pretending nothing happened is a form of complicity.”
And who claims that, as a parent, forgiveness is always due?
«I respond by recounting a specific episode: from prison my father wrote me letters asking for forgiveness. I was in therapy and decided to go and see him to close that parenthesis in my life. There I discovered that he was asking me for forgiveness only because he had asked the President of the Republic for pardon. When I told him that he had ruined my life, he replied that his life was ruined. What I want to say is this: we are talking about pathological narcissists, let’s not forget that.”
date: 2026-02-08 00:00:00