What was supposed to be a student protest against the high cost of living turned into an intolerable and unacceptable episode of gratuitous violence. Last November 3, during the occupation of the Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori Polyspecialist High School in Acerra, in the province of Naples, a goldfish that had lived for years in the school aquarium was thrown out of the water and repeatedly hit to death with a broom while it lay dying on the floor.
The scene, played out in front of other kids and filmed with smartphones to then be spread on social media as a macabre spectacle, is part of a devastation that includes destroyed furnishings, a dismantled radiator and the entry of external people into the building. The school director Giovanni La Montagna, finding the institute turned upside down, immediately asked for the resignation of the institute representative, indicated by the images viewed as the person responsible for the attack, underlining the impossibility that he could represent a community of 1,300 students unrelated to similar behaviour.
The criminal complaint for mistreatment and aggravated killing of animals
The indignation quickly crossed the school gates and turned into concrete legal action. The Roman association Zampe che da una Mano ODV, chaired by the lawyer Bernardi, founder of the GiustiziAnimale law firm, has filed a formal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for Minors of Naples and the Prosecutor’s Office of Nola.
The complaint hypothesizes the crime of killing animals aggravated by torture, the presence of minors and the dissemination of the video online, asking the police to identify the material perpetrator and all those who participated in or filmed the attack. As highlighted by the lawyers, protesting is a right, but venting anger on a defenseless creature deprives any claim of meaning: the law does not draw up classifications between species and science confirms that even fish feel pain and suffering, making any attempt to minimize what happened unacceptable.
The intervention of the OIPA and the alarm on social danger
The OIPA also intervened firmly on the matter through its president Massimo Comparotto, writing directly to the high school management to request exemplary disciplinary measures, the delivery of all evidence to the investigators and the launch of educational courses aimed at respecting living beings and the criminal consequences of violence. The association strongly reiterated that an animal is neither a decorative object nor a toy and that killing a sentient being can never be dismissed as a simple prank. Criminology has long recognized cruelty towards animals as a serious alarm bell and an indicator of social danger: those who learn in adolescence that the life of a defenseless being has no value risk in fact stopping at nothing.
