The Scandal That Changed Italian Law

Franca Viola as a young woman

Franca Viola and Giuseppe Riusi, a young Sicilian couple, plighted their troth in 1961, when she was only fourteen and he not much older. They lived in the village of Alcamo, children of agricultural workers. Little money; less education.

At that time and place, among such families, La Fuitina was a common mode of getting married. This involved having the young couple disappear for a few days then return to the village hand in hand, signaling to the world that they had been intimate.

This action made her a fallen woman who could be ostracized and him a rapist who faced prison. But all could be made right through a strange part of the Italian legal code at the time called matrimonio reparatore (rehabilitating wedding). A woman could restore her own honor and that of her family by marrying the man with whom she’d had sexual relations, and the man could be absolved of rape charges. Many poor families, unable to afford dowries and wedding feasts, encouraged their children to take this route.

Who knows, Franca and Giuseppe might have done La Fuitina at some point. It was part of their cultural heritage, after all. But alas, they weren’t given the chance.

Franca blossomed into a beautiful young woman. By the age of seventeen, she was being pursued by Filippo Melodia, 21, a young man with Mafia connections who came from a rich and powerful family. Franca wanted nothing to do with him and rebuffed him at every turn, honoring her pledge to Giuseppe.

Determined to have her, Filippo assembled twelve of his friends and kidnapped Franca, along with her eight-year-old brother, Mariano, on the day after Christmas 1965. The kidnappers released Mariano after a short time and sent him back home. Filippo restrained Franca and repeatedly raped her for eight days.

Meanwhile, Franca’s father, Bernando, negotiated with the kidnappers for her return, ostensibly making arrangements for a matrimonio reparatore between Franca and Filippo. In truth, he was cooperating with the police to set up a sting operation which ultimately led to her release and the kidnappers’ arrest.

Franca Viola today

The Italian penal code at that time defined sexual violence as a crime against morality, not against the victim. In fact, a raped woman was seen as guilty of immoral behavior for having sex outside marriage, cursed for life as a slut. Both she and her family would have been shunned by the community. Her only recourse was to marry the rapist in a matrimonio ripartore. Men had used this scheme before to secure marriage with a reluctant conquest.

Filippo offered Franca this resolution, but she refused. Her father supported her decision, and together they challenged the law. This courageous act by a semi-literate Sicilian farm worker and his daughter blazed a trail that transformed the Italian penal code.

The trial of Filippo and his accomplices splashed across Italian newspapers daily. Death threats hounded the Viola family, and arson consumed their vineyards and home. Filippo’s lawyers portrayed Franca as an immoral young woman who had welcomed the interlude. But Franca’s lawyer, Ludovico Corrao, argued that the matrimonio riparatore was a barbaric custom that had to be eradicated.

The judges heard Corrao. Filippo was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in prison. His accomplices received lesser, various sentences. Filippo served ten years, leaving prison in 1976 only to be killed two years later during a Mafia power struggle in Alcamo.

Franca became a folk hero to the budding feminist movement in Italy. Her actions led the Parliament to eventually repeal the matrimonio riparatore legislation in 1981. No rapist in Italy can now be exonerated in this fashion, and a rape victim is a victim. Period.

Of the episode, Franca said at the time, “I didn’t want to marry a man I didn’t love. I would rather spend my entire life alone than do that.”

The Honeymoon

But she hasn’t spent her life alone. Despite the notoriety of her rape and the ensuing publicity, childhood sweethearts Franca Viola and Giuseppe Riusi married in 1968, seven years after their engagement. The President of the Republic sent a gift to the bridal couple as a show of solidarity, and on their honeymoon in Rome, they had a private audience with Pope Paul VI.

They moved away from Alcamo for the first three years of their marriage for fear of retaliation. They returned in 1971 and live there still among their children and grandchildren.

Today Franca says, “It was not a courageous gesture. I only did what I felt I had to do, as any other girl would do today. I listened to my heart.”

The Legacy of a Romance – Nehru and Lady Mountbatten

By Supriya Savkoor

Hands down, the most pivotal moment in India’s modern history was its independence from the British empire, which took place at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. The freedom struggle had juggernauted toward that goal for at least a hundred years. But once freedom was won, it was a bittersweet victory, with British India, the jewel in the crown, torn into not one but two countries, India and Pakistan, like twins born at the same hopeful moment then violently separated.

That’s because despite their shared ancestry and heritage, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims on both sides of the border erupted into violent clashes. More than 12 to 15 million people were displaced, becoming refugees, and crossing a border into a new country and new world order where they knew no one, had no roots or safety net – all because of communal (religious) riots, fear mongering, and forced uprootings. It's considered the largest migration in history, and the anger and bitterness over the events of that time still fill people on both sides of the border with much passion, mostly enmity.

An overcrowded train transferring refugees
during the partition of India, 1947

Historians say much of the blame can be placed on Lord Louis Mountbatten, India’s last viceroy and, after independence, its first governor-general. Mountbatten, who 30 years later would be assassinated in Ireland in an IRA bombing on his fishing boat, was Prince Philip’s uncle (that’s Prince Philip, as in Queen Elizabeth’s husband) as well as mentor to the young Prince Charles and "honorary grandfather."

The Mountbattens in the 1920s

A British statesman, naval officer, admiral of the fleet, a member of the British Royal Family, and the anointed Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Louis Mountbatten was sent to India by Clement Attlee, the prime minister of the UK, to India in 1947 to oversee a swift transfer of power from the British to the Indians no later than 1948. As World War II in particular had taken a huge toll on the Brits, financially and otherwise, Attlee had two priorities for Mountbatten – make the transfer quick and painless, keeping Britain’s reputation as untarnished as possible. The directive would prove to be disastrous, leading pretty much directly to the terrible rioting and displacement of so many.

Lord Mountbatten and his wife, British socialite and heiress, Edwina (nee Ashley), moved to India in 1947, and almost from the get-go, struck up a close friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru, the then-leader of the Indian National Congress, who would soon become the first prime minister of independent India. By this time, Nehru, an Anglophile who’d been sent to London for his schooling, was a widower, responsible for his young daughter, Indira (who would decades later become prime minister herself), and carrying the weight of his nation’s future on his shoulders. He’d been mentored by Mahatma Gandhi himself, rising to Congress president under Gandhi’s guidance, and widely seen as his political heir.

On the historic occasion of the raising of the
first flag of India on August 15, 1947

Though it’s more of a footnote to history, it is widely believed that Nehru and the vicerine were romantically involved. There’s certainly no doubt of their close friendship, which Lord Mountbatten knew of but either turned a blind eye to or else just accepted.

They made an odd pair, Nehru and Edwina, and not just because of the cultural differences.

Lady Mountbatten was a beautiful, glamorous, and very rich heiress, a countess who’d descended from earls and barons. She’d largely lived a life of leisure, and despite two young daughters, she and her husband had an open marriage in which they both had many affairs, some scandalous.

Nehru, on the other hand, hailed from a political family, and had spent his entire career in the pursuit of India’s independence, building his reputation as a hard-working, unflagging nationalist.

The iconic and much-analyzed photo
taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1948

And yet, the countess spent endless afternoons with the handsome and charismatic politician, chatting about everything under the sun as well as sitting together in long stretches of comfortable silence. Though the Mountbattens lived in Delhi for only a few years, Lady Mountbatten visited India at least once or twice a year till the end of her life. Suitcases upon suitcases of letters to her from Nehru have been the subject of several books, including one by her daughter Pamela. (Check out this fascinating interview of Pamela on the topic from only a few years ago.) Lord Mountbatten himself once wrote to Edwina’s sister of how his wife and the would-be prime minister “are so sweet together, they really dote on each other.”

Did they or didn’t they seems to be the question many want to ask, and those who’ve read the letters say they probably didn’t. But many of the letters include exchanges of affection and longing, counting the days till they would get to see each other next. Historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote in her 2007 book on the subject that Lady Mountbatten had written a letter to her husband stating that her relationship with Nehru was “mostly platonic. Mostly, but not always.” (What do you suppose hubby’s response was to that admission? We’ll have to read the book to find out.)

The more intriguing speculation is what powers of persuasion did the wife of Britain’s top representative in India have on India's top politician and powerbroker? Mountbatten himself said on occasion that if he wanted to convince Nehru of something, he would put his wife on the task of broaching it at one of their private meetings. The expedited timetable for independence, negotiations with all the various power players in reaching a consensus, the partition of the two states, the Kashmir issue that remains a huge thorn in regional stability even today.... all these and more were topics Nehru, bogged down by worry and his huge responsibility to his country, discussed with his confidante and possible lover.

If it sounds like a movie, it almost was. von Tunzelmann’s 2007 book, Indian Summer: The Secret End of an Empire, was set to be adapted into a film starring Hugh Grant and Cate Blanchett as the Mountbattens and Irfhan Khan as Nehru. But plans halted when the Indian government refused to allow filming in the country unless the filmmakers agreed to take out the scandalous aspects about its first prime minister.

But how did it all end? Thirteen years after India’s independence, Edwina, only 58, died in her sleep while on a trip to Borneo, a stack of Nehru’s letters sitting on her nightstand. As the Royal Navy took her body to Britain's southern coast for a sea burial, Prime Minister Nehru sent a fleet of Indian Navy ships to cast a wreath into the water on his behalf. He died barely four years later.