They called him “Paoletta”, “girl”, “Nino d’Angelo”. For a professor he was “a bonaccione”. For bullies, a target. For his mother, a “pure, crystalline” son who was turning out under the weight of words. On September 11, Paolo Mendico, 14 years old, put everyone silent by taking his life away before returning to that school that should have protected him. Now the Prosecutor of Cassino investigates for instigation to suicide, but his death is already a sentence that goes beyond the classrooms of a court: it is the reflection of a system that has not been able to listen, see and act.
His is a story of ancient injuries. As the older brother denounced Ivan Roberto Mendico, in a letter sent to the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara and even to Pope Leo XIV, the persecutions had started since elementary school. A ordeal made of physical aggressions and an isolation that also chasing him online, pushing him to change the institute in middle school, just to find himself target again at the Patinotti technical high school in Continotti in Fondi. The evening before he died, his last message to his companions played as an unheard prayer: “Keep me a front row place at school”.
Family VS School: two irreconcilable versions
The pain of the family is a river in full. “My son was different from everyone, because my son was a pure, crystalline boy, he didn’t say bad words,” said his mother in an interview a Unknown x On La7. A sensitivity that, according to the mother, was called “by Bonaccione” even by some professor because he was alarmed in the face of the vulgarity of peers. A purity that perhaps annoys. The mother stressed that the complaints and reports to the school, including those on negative appreciations by teachers, remained unheeded. A sense of abandonment sharp by an excruciating image: “There was none of his classmates at the funeral – he said – only one boy with whom he was very according”.
A version of the facts that collides frontally with that of the principal of the Pacinotti Institute, Gina Antonetti. “The school has never received complaints,” said the Adnkronos news agency, speaking of “a real mud machine”. According to the manager, Paolo frequented the psychological listening desk without having critical issues to activate emergency protocols emerge. He denied that the school was not present at the funeral and ensured that the Institute has always put initiatives against bullying on the field. He specified that the boy “complained only of the fact that his companions said bad words and behaved badly” and that the school had intervened on this. Two truths at the antipodes, that the judiciary will now have to unstricare.
Paolo’s case, however, has uncovered an too long silenced national emergency. The data of the Defense 2024 Observatory of Terre des Hommes reveal that 63% of young people are victims of bullying. A HBSC Italia 2022 study indicates that for those who suffer it, the risk of depression, self -harm and suicidal thoughts tripled. An alarm confirmed by the 75% increase in attempted suicides among minors recorded in some hospitals after Lockdown.
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Minister Valditara has ordered immediate inspections to verify compliance with law 70/2024 against bullying. The world of politics has invoked national plans and greater investments. Civil society also made its voice heard. “Forgive us Paolo if we have not been able to help you and sorry if they gave you my name,” wrote Nino D’Angelo on social media, feeling called into question by that cruel nickname. The influencer Irene Vella, who lived bullying on the skin of her children, has strongly recalled that “bullying kills. It is not enough to denounce, it is necessary to listen to true, concrete protection, immediate interventions”.
Projecting films such as “The boy with pink trousers” in schools is a step away, but Paolo’s story shows that it is not enough. Sensitizing is not enough if the complaints fall into the void, if the rubber wall of the institutions rejects requests for help. Paolo’s death is not a “girl” ended badly. It is, as his brother Ivan wrote, “the failure of our society”. A failure that concerns us all and that requires us to transform pain into action, indignation into responsibility. Because no other guy should be felt so only to prefer eternal silence to the sounds of life.
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