AS IF SHE HAD TAKEN AWAY A CHILD’S PACIFIER - Deborah Breda - ETHICA SOCIETAS-Rivista di scienze umane e sociali

The Metaphor of Possession in the Stalking Hearing and the Black Hole in Gender Training

Abstract: This contribution offers a critical reflection, grounded in direct courtroom experience, on the reproduction of patriarchal power dynamics within the courtroom in proceedings concerning stalking (Art. 612-bis of the Italian Penal Code). Through an interdisciplinary lens integrating criminology, psychotraumatology, and criminal law, the article analyzes the gap between investigative evidence and procedural narrative, focusing on mechanisms of cultural minimization of gender-based violence, the phenomenon of internalized patriarchy, and the neurobiological reactions of the victim during trial testimony. It highlights the persistent training deficiencies among judicial system professionals and underscores the urgency of structural education on gender-based violence in compliance with European obligations stemming from Directive 2012/29/EU and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (Talpis v. Italy, 2017).

Keywords: #GenderBasedViolence #Stalking #Patriarchy #FreezingResponse #Retraction #SecondaryVictimization #JudicialTraining #JudicialPolice #PsychologicalTrauma #LensOfViolence #CycleOfViolence #EmotionalDependency #EmotionalManipulation #CulturalChange #CultureOfFreedom #EducationForRespect #Respect #NoToViolence #DeborahBreda #EthicaSocietas #ScientificJournal #EthicaSocietasJournal #EthicaSocietasUPLI

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Introduction: The Glasses of Violence

This article arises from a first-hand experience during a criminal proceeding for stalking (acts of persecution). I recount this experience through a dual professional lens: on the one hand, that of the judicial police officer, navigating the dualism between investigation and courtroom, collecting complaints, cataloguing messages, and reconstructing episodes of surveillance; on the other hand, that of the psychologist specialized in gender-based violence, accustomed to listening to trauma, decoding its symptoms, and recognizing the silent language of fear.

It was precisely this second perspective that made the courtroom experience particularly demanding—at times almost unbearable. What unfolded before me was not merely a trial: it was the possible reproduction, in legally permissible forms, of the very dynamics of power and domination observed during the investigative phase.

Above all, I attended that hearing wearing the “glasses of violence”—the same glasses that all of us—judges, lawyers, practitioners, citizens—should learn to wear in order to perceive what otherwise remains invisible: possession, manipulation, coercion. The defendant’s “pacifier” metaphor and the defense attorney’s strategy, when viewed through these lenses, illuminate the cultural roots of the phenomenon and the educational gaps within the judicial system. Without such glasses, gender-based violence becomes camouflaged: it is reduced to “an argument gone wrong,” “an impulsive reaction,” “excessive jealousy.” It becomes normalized.

Two Worlds, One Trial

As a judicial police officer, I found myself moving between two distinct yet complementary worlds within the same prosecution for acts of persecution: on the one hand, my investigative work—listening to the victim, collecting evidence, reconstructing a mosaic of terror made up of messages, stalking episodes, and threatening gazes; on the other hand, the courtroom, where I witnessed the defendant’s testimony.

It is precisely in this gap between investigative evidence and courtroom narrative that the deepest and most troubling core of gender-based violence emerges. Despite advanced legal instruments, such violence still struggles to be understood in its cultural root, because that root lies in the terrain of patriarchy.

A Flash in the Semi-Darkness: The “Pacifier” Metaphor

During his examination, the defendant—attempting to explain, perhaps unconsciously to justify, his persecutory conduct—uttered a phrase that struck like a flash in the semi-darkness of the courtroom:

“She left me, and I reacted that way because it was as if she had taken a pacifier away from a child.”

In this seemingly banal and almost grotesque sentence lies the synthesis of a predatory mindset and a patriarchal culture that we ought to have left behind. The “child” deprived of the “pacifier” is not an adult experiencing romantic disappointment; it is an individual who perceives a woman as property—an object functional to his emotional well-being and equilibrium. An object of comfort and power.

When that object is “taken away”—that is, when the woman exercises her freedom and self-determination by choosing to leave—the reaction is not sorrow over the loss of a relationship, but anger at the loss of possession.

From “Anger Outburst” to Daily Persecution

Here lies the essence of stalking: conduct that originates in the inability to accept the end of a relationship and the refusal to relinquish control. The persecution becomes the “violent tantrum” of a child deprived of a toy; in concrete terms, however, it translates into obsessive phone calls, nighttime surveillance, insults, and threats—actions aimed at reasserting dominance, punishing the woman for her “disobedience,” and re-establishing influence over her.

Within this semiotic register, violence does not appear as the explosion of emotion but as a structured language of power (Stark, 2007).

The Defense Attorney and the Paradox of Internalized Patriarchy

If the defendant’s statement offered the metaphor of the problem, another presence in the courtroom revealed its systemic complexity: the defense was conducted by a female attorney. In seeking to delegitimize the prosecution, she transformed a statement made by the victim (“they forced me to report it”) into a means of undermining the credibility of the testimony, addressing her questions to me as a judicial police officer rather than directly confronting the injured party.

In her professional role, that attorney was not merely defending a man; she was—perhaps unknowingly—legitimizing a narrative of possession. Her professional competence was placed at the service of a cultural structure that ultimately harms her as well, as a woman. This may be the most insidious dimension: witnessing the script of patriarchy performed by one of its presumed victims.

Thus, gender-based violence becomes normalized not only among men but also among those who, by role and status, should possess the interpretative tools to recognize and counter it.

Fear in the Courtroom: A Traumatic Amplifier

The procedural dynamic became a mirror of the violence experienced outside the courtroom. A stalking victim called to testify before her aggressor—seated only a few meters from the witness stand—is not an ordinary witness. Fear persists—chronic and irrational to those who have never lived it, yet physiologically understandable to those familiar with trauma.

A previously experienced traumatic state resurfaces, amplified: the terror of not being believed, the perceived threat of renewed domination.

The victim is compelled to recount her experience in the presence of the individual who manipulated and threatened her, activating all the neurobiological components of trauma: freezing, fear of retaliation, familial or community pressure, internalized guilt, traumatic attachment mechanisms, lack of immediate protection. All fears converge there, before everyone—and above all, before him (Porges, 2011; van der Kolk, 2014).

The Black Hole of Training

The ability to decode this language and to recognize gender-based violence in its most subtle forms remains gravely deficient. Specialized training in combating the phenomenon is far from effective or widespread. This gap reverberates across all contexts—from education to healthcare to the judiciary.

If those called to judge or even merely to listen lack the tools to perceive, behind the victim’s hesitation, the cry of ancestral fear—or behind the “pacifier” metaphor, the admission of a logic of possession—violence risks being trivialized, reduced to a “crime of passion” or an emotional overreaction. But it is not that. It is the reenactment of a script as ancient as patriarchy.

The Remaining Question

When confronted with her aggressor, the victim’s brain may activate primordial survival mechanisms that lead her to minimize, retract, or say whatever seems capable of reducing perceived threat. Saying “they forced me” is not necessarily a lie; it may signal a level of fear so intense that only an external authority (the police commissioner) could break the wall of silence and terror.

Whether the defense attorney understood this or not remains, fundamentally, a question of training.

The dynamic of power and possession—called stalking outside the courtroom—can reappear within it through different means, exploiting the victim’s wounds to defeat her a second time.

To confront that sentence was to confront the “monster”: not extraordinary in form, but perfectly representative of a culture that still struggles to recognize women as subjects rather than objects.

My duty, as a judicial police officer, is to collect evidence. Our collective duty, as a society, is to continue educating, training, and making visible what remains invisible. Only then can we claim to be truly combating gender-based violence—rather than merely chasing its consequences.

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