For three years they lived in a shelter home. She, Audrey Carmen Manuela Ubedaforced to leave their daily lives to find safety. His children, who grew up far from a normal life while the institutions called to protect them accumulated delays amidst a tide of stereotypes.
Now, they are right by the European Court of Human Rights, which condemned Italy for not having adequately handled the complaints of domestic and sexual violence lodged against the woman’s ex-partner.
In the ruling filed on 2 July, the Strasbourg judges speak of untimely investigations, inadequate measures and secondary victimization also fueled by comments deemed sexist. A decision that goes beyond the single case and which brings an uncomfortable question back to the center: how many women, after having found the courage to report, still find themselves having to prove that they are victims?
Who is Audrey Carmen Manuela Ubeda
At the center of the story is Audrey Carmen Manuela Ubeda, a 43-year-old French citizen who has long lived in Italy and is the mother of two children born in 2011 and 2014. In April 2021 she reported her ex-partner, the father of her children, describing years of physical, psychological and sexual violence suffered within the relationship. The charges also involved aggressive behavior towards minors. After the complaint, Ubeda and his children were transferred to a shelter, where they remained for approximately three years. Her story has now become a symbol of the difficulties that many women encounter in having their complaints recognized and addressed promptly.
According to what was reconstructed by the Court, the Italian institutions did not guarantee rapid and effective intervention. While the woman and her children were removed from their daily lives and forced to live in a protected facility, her ex-partner was not subjected to any restrictive measures.
The ECHR’s assessments of the reasons with which a public prosecutor had requested the dismissal of the proceedings in November 2021 are particularly weighty. An episode reported by the woman, during which the man allegedly held a knife to her throat, was defined by the magistrate as a “joke in bad taste”. Even more controversial are the comments relating to the accusations of sexual violence, judged by the Court to be permeated by gender stereotypes and a discriminatory vision of relationships between men and women.
For European judges, these statements have contributed to a form of secondary victimization, that is, the phenomenon in which those who report violence suffer further trauma from the very institutions called to protect them. The Court also criticized the slowness of the judicial procedures: although the woman had requested sole custody of the children, her ex-partner’s parental responsibility was revoked only in May 2024, three years after the start of the procedure.
Even on the criminal front, the process was particularly long: the man’s indictment only arrived in February 2024 and, according to what the Court reported, the first hearing was never held.
For Strasbourg, the Italian authorities did not carry out timely and thorough investigations and did not periodically verify whether the measures adopted were truly adequate for the protection of women and children.
A sentence that speaks to the whole country
The ECtHR’s decision does not just concern a single case, but draws attention to structural problems that continue to emerge in the management of domestic violence: delays in investigations, underestimation of risk, gender stereotypes and difficulties in ensuring effective protection for victims.
The sentence can be appealed within three months. If this does not happen, it will become final. In the meantime, the Strasbourg ruling represents an important warning: the protection of women and minor victims of violence cannot be entrusted to superficial assessments nor to cultural prejudices that end up once again putting those who have found the courage to report under accusation.
