“I am nobody’s son, an orphan of femicide. Disowned by my father, who after being released from prison, never came to look for me, even though it should have been me who hated him. I still today have received no answers to explain what happened. Just one thing is certain: I don’t want to have fought for my whole life and die for nothing.”

Pasquale Guadagno

On 25 April 2010, Salvatore Guadagno killed his wife and mother to their two children, Carmela Cerillo. He strangled the woman he claimed to love. He was sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment in a summary judgement, reduced to thirteen and a half for good behavior. He killed her out of jealousy. Carmela was thirty-seven, she died young. “My property”, her husband called her.

At fourteen, their son Pasquale found himself carrying the double burden of being son of both the victim and the killer. Torn between hatred for the violent and murderous man and a boy’s need for a father, between condemnation and the desire to redeem his father so as to salvage a piece of his family, he lives teetering between a past he can’t shake and a present he wants to build. But this isn’t just the story of his sadness. Above all, it’s the story of how, with the support of his big sister Annamaria, he was able to become the man he is today: self-aware, courageous, resilient. And it is also intended as a collective testimony, because abuse and gender-based violence are carried out in silence and omertà – by people, institutions, the state – and in the isolation of the victims, who continue to pay the price of a deep scarcity of sentimental education and a culture still steeped in prejudice. Taking action means challenging an entire way of life.

Fifteen years later Pasquale Guadagno, in a frank memoir that seeks neither pity nor pardon, with the help of journalist Francesca Barra, who for many years has written and told stories of civil rights injustice, grapples with the grief that marked him forever and that still defines him.

About the authors

PASQUALE GUADAGNO is twenty-eight years old, lives in Udine, and owns a bar. He is the author of the memoir Ovunque tu sia. Together with his sister, he founded the Anime Invisibili association to support those who, like them, have lost a parent to femicide, as well as all women who experience domestic violence, offering them a way to escape.

FRANCESCA BARRA is a journalist and writer. She currently hosts the political analysis program “4 di sera weekend” on Rete 4 and writes for L’Espresso. Over the years, she has hosted several radio and television programs and collaborated with various media outlets, also covering organized crime.