Franca Viola

In the mid 1960s, in the little town of Alcamo, near Trapani, lived a girl who, like many  contemporaries of hers,  had very simple expectations for her own future:  marrying a good man and creating  with him an  honest family like the one she came from. Franca Viola, that was her name, was not yet eighteen years old when, after realizing she had chosen the wrong person as a fiancee,  she decided to break off the  engagement with Filippo Melodia, a wealthy young man, but nephew of a well known boss of Alcamo and directly involved in illegal activities. The young man didn’t accept her rejection and so, aided by some accomplices,  kidnapped Franca and abused her. He believed at that time in Sicily the family honor was more important than the individual happiness and Franca’s parents would bend to the established practice of the “shotgun wedding”, to erase the shame of their daughter.

Yet, the unexpected happened:  supported by her father Bernardo, Franca said “no” to the “shotgun wedding”: “[...] my daughter doesn’t want and, I believe, she will never want as her husband the man who despicably kidnapped and disrespected her”, would then Bernardo  say. So, Filippo Melodia was arrested, tried and found guilty of kidnapping for marriage and carnal violence. After a few years and other complaints similar to Franca’s one, only in 1981 the rule of the penal code that justified the “shotgun wedding” would be deleted.

The “no” of a little girl and the resistance of poor people to the abuse of power and the logic of oppression had succeeded in changing history.