Paolo Mendico's suicide, headmistress suspended for three days

Three days of suspension and the pages of a diary recounting anger, humiliation, loneliness. And acts of bullying, perhaps perpetrated by the very people who should have defended and protected him. This is the new chapter in the tragedy of Paolo Mendico, the 14-year-old from Santi Cosma and Damiano who took his own life the day before school started, a few months ago. The headmistress of the institute he attended has in fact been temporarily suspended, while Paolo's writings, as reported by Il Messaggero, are being analysed word by word by a graphologist psychologist commissioned by the family to reconstruct the boy's state of mind and the bullying episodes he suffered before the extreme gesture.

The suspension of headmistress Gina Antonetti, head of the Iti 'Antonio Pacinotti' school in Fondi, was ordered at the end of a disciplinary procedure followed by inspectors sent by the Ministry of Education. According to the Flc CGIL, the decision confirms 'how well-founded the fear that the entire affair had been mishandled by the ministry'. Paolo's brother, Ivan Roberto, speaks of a case against the school director that is certainly not enough, and amounts to 'a sop'. "It seems to me a rather unbalanced decision: three days is like being 'called back to the blackboard'. We go ahead, but it seems a bit too little,' he says. "On the one hand there is a person who is no longer there, on the other a suspension: is human life no longer worth anything?"

Meanwhile, the boy's diaries are the focus of in-depth analysis. The forensic graphologist psychologist Marisa Aloia, already a consultant in famous cases such as the Novi Ligure murder, is examining each page, tracing a real psychological profile of Paolo. 'In one of the pages analysed,' Aloia explained, 'Paolo writes in a fragmentary way, a disturbed state of mind is evident. He relates an episode related to the fact that he had been sent back in mathematics and appears very angry with the teacher because one of his classmates, one of the alleged bullies, had instead been promoted despite the fact that his performance was not good'. The boy, moreover, had not been able to enrol in the after-school programme for financial reasons and the teacher is said to have objected 'that after all the after-school programme did not cost so much', continues the psychologist, quoted by Il Messaggero. "This speech upset Paolo very much, who probably felt humiliated and accused in front of the whole class'. One detail emerged from the diaries that is considered fundamental: Paolo had an online video-game friend with whom he played regularly. The day before his suicide, 10 September, he had arranged an appointment with him for the following evening.

But on the morning of 11 September, the first day of school, Paolo took his own life in his bedroom. 'It is an important detail,' stressed the psychologist, 'that outlines a design in time. The previous day Paolo had no intention of killing himself. The question is: what happened between 10 and 11 September?". For the doctor, another 'alarm bell indicating deep suffering' would be Paul's use of the third person in his writings, along with the perception of incomprehension and isolation. The investigation for incitement to suicide is still ongoing, but the family is looking for an answer: 'My son took his own life on the morning of the first day of school, so he did it to avoid going back to class. This is very clear to us and it is on this data that we must dig to get to the truth. And to the responsibilities of those who knew about the bullying and did nothing', the words of Giuseppe, Paolo's father. The diaries, now under graphological examination, could offer those decisive details on the emotional path that led the young man to make the extreme gesture. And while the educational institutions face their own possible responsibility, those pages offer a direct testimony of the discomfort experienced by the boy, with his words put down on paper.