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The first woman to openly denounce the Cosa Nostra was Francesca Serio, mother of the socialist trade unionist Salvatore Carnevale. Widowed with a young child in rural Sicily in the 1950s, where women were confined to their homes, she moved to Sciara, in the province of Palermo, to work in the fields. When Salvatore, a fervent supporter of agrarian reform, was murdered by the mafia, she denounced his killers and became a civil party in the trial against them, breaking the silence imposed by the clans. The perpetrators were silenced to life imprisonment in the first instance, but the sentence was overturned on appeal and by the Court of Cassation.
A few decades later, it was Felicia Bartolotta’s turn to denounce the murderers of her son, journalist and anti-mafia activist Peppino Impastato, killed in Cinisi, near Palermo, in 1978 on the orders of godfather Badalamenti. She refused to give up, fought in the courtrooms, and ultimately obtained his conviction. Until her death in 2004, she tirelessly maintained that it was not revenge she’d sought, but justice. She also spoke to young people, urging them to “keep their heads high and their backs straight,” as she herself had done.
Mafia femicides
According to the anti-mafia association Libera, between 1878 and 2022, 133 women were victims of mafia clans, 36 of whom were minors. This phenomenon primarily affects Sicily (34), Calabria (29), and Apulia (24). Most of them were brutally executed: some were shot, dismembered, or dissolved in acid; others were forced to “commit suicide” by ingesting corrosive liquids. Many disappeared without a trace, unable to obtain justice even after their deaths, as trials are often dismissed in the absence of a body or result in acquittals due to lack of evidence, despite complaints, wiretaps, and witness testimonies.
Between 1878 and 2022, 133 women were victims of mafia clans, 36 of whom were minors.
Some were killed by stray bullets, like Silvia Ruotolo, Maria Colangiuli, and Francesca Moccia; others were killed in acts of cross-revenge against mafia relatives, like Liliana Caruso and Agata Zucchero; still others were murdered for dedicating their lives to fighting the clans, like councilor Renata Fonte, magistrate Francesca Morvillo—a pillar of the Palermo juvenile prosecutor’s office and second wife of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone—and Emanuela Loi, the first female police officer to be part of an escort.
In the name of freedom
Many women have refused, in the name of freedom, the rigid patriarchal code imposed by their own mafia families. Maria Concetta Cacciola is one of them. Born in 1980 into a powerful family belonging to the ‘Ndrangheta (the Calabrian mafia clan), she married, at the age of 13, the young affiliate Salvatore Figliuzzi, who subjected her to physical and psychological abuse. When he was imprisoned, and even though she was under the strict supervision of her father and brother, she fell in love with a boy she met online. She was discovered and brutalized by the two men. Summoned to the police station for a problem involving one of her children, she decided to report the abuse she had suffered and her family’s trafficking activities.
She became a witness for the prosecution and was transferred to a protected location, but she missed her children, who had been taken away from her due to bureaucratic delays. When she finally managed to contact them, her mother ordered her to retract her statements if she wanted to ever see them again. Maria Concetta went back home. Back with her family, she was forced to recant the statements she made to the magistrates.
A few days later, she was found dead in her bathroom. The family claimed it was suicide, but the judges had no doubt—“The forced ingestion of muriatic acid, a clear reference to silencing those who talk too much, is a method typically used by the mafia to kill informants,” reads the first-instance judgment of the Palmi Assize Court, which convicted the father, mother, and brother for abuse. Meanwhile, the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office was investigating the crime as homicide.
The story of Lea Garofalo is equally cruel. The daughter of a fearsome godfather from the province of Crotone, she married Carlo Cuosco, a loyal member of the clan, at the age of 13. The couple moved to Milan, where their daughter Denise was born. But when her husband was arrested for drug trafficking, Lea decided to leave him to secure a better future for her daughter. She testified against her own family, who subjected her to intimidation and threats, before entering the witness protection program, which was later revoked.
In 2012, in Milan, she met with her ex-husband to discuss their now-teenage daughter, and he strangled her. Her body was transported by accomplices to an abandoned lot and was burned and dissolved in acid to erase all traces—an exemplary punishment for those who dare to rebel against a man of honor by renouncing the bonds of blood. For the ‘Ndrangheta, these bonds must remain unbreakable. In 2013, thousands of people attended her funeral. The remains of her martyred body rest in the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, an enduring symbol of unwavering courage against mafia power.
For the sake of the children
For mothers who want to save their children from a life of crime without becoming witnesses or collaborators with the justice system (1), Judge Roberto di Bella created “Liberi di scegliere” (Free to Choose), an interministerial protocol that was launched in Calabria in 2014 and was subsequently extended to Sicily. Through a national support network coordinated by the Libera association, the project offers assistance with housing, employment, and education.
To date, the protocol has supported 83 minors and young adults and approximately 30 families. “Liberi di scegliere” also includes educational programs on legality to deconstruct the mafia mythology that can seduce young people lacking prospects. In 2025, the Palermo court initiated more than 150 proceedings to terminate parental rights against parents belonging to mafia clans, demonstrating the effectiveness of these protective measures.
“Unlike mothers, who don’t lose their parental authority over their children because they remain in the home or are often separated from them and continue to see them regardless of the cost, fathers are almost always deprived of their parental authority,” explains Anna Sergi, a criminologist specializing in the ‘Ndrangheta, professor at the Alma Mater University of Bologna, and honorary professor at the Universities of Essex (UK) and Melbourne.
“Because they consider their children their private property, they react very badly at first, but after a rehabilitation program in prison, some understand that getting the children to adhere to the protocol means saving them.” State support, however, ends when the children reach the age of majority. “After that,” Sergi specifies, “some may even return to their families and become members of the mafia. Others, fortunately, manage to stay outside the clan dynamics to build a new life elsewhere.”
