Around 3,500 minors in Italy are orphans because their mothers were murdered in the alarming spate of femicides the country is suffering, the president of a body that monitors this phenomenon said on Thursday.
"Special orphans were absolutely invisible in numbers terms until recently," Stefania Bartoccetti, the president of the Independent National Observatory on Femicide Orphans, told the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Femicide.
"There was no register to collect the numbers, and no way to have constant data collection.
"We have managed to do this via the study of journalistic reports on women who have died by homicide and, from there, we were able to reconstruct the number of special orphans, which, in the age range of minors, total over 3,500 in Italy".
The nation is again in shock due to a femicide after a 14-year-old girl was brutally beaten to death with a rock in the province of Naples town of Afragola this week.
