December 4, 2024 • 12 mins
One of the world’s unsung heroes – at least outside of Italy – is a brave woman who stood up to an insidious and longstanding custom and made her country a better place for it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Chuck's here and Jerry's here for Dave, So that makes
this an official short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right, And we're going to issue a trigger warning
on this one. Part of the story has to do
with sexual assault, so we just wanted to kind of
let everyone know that that's coming. But ultimately this is
a story of courage and bravery.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah. So if you go down to Sicily and southern
Italy and ask them what a fou atina is, they
will say, huh, we don't really do that anymore, but
we'll tell you what it is anyway. It means sudden escape,
and in its most benign form, it was a way
for couples who were consenting. They wanted to get married,
(00:44):
but their families were like, no, we don't approve of
this union, and therefore you can't get married. It was
a way for them to elope all right. So the
fu atina was essentially an elopement. The key to the
fu atina, though, was that the couple would wait a
little while, say a week, and then they would return
home and their families would presume that over the course
(01:07):
of that week this couple had had premarital sex. So
when they came back, the couple was like, now you
have to agree to letting us get married. And in fact,
it's going to be a specific type of marriage that's
prescribed by law and socially it's called the matrimonial repertory.
It's called a rehabilitating marriage. Right.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That's right, and that was a legal thing. It was
a socially accepted thing to where you could restore honor
to that bride. It was a loophole if he wanted
to get married and your parents didn't like he were
getting married to. But there was a very dark version
of this in which a man could take a woman
(01:51):
that he wanted to marry even if she didn't want to.
He could take her away, he could kidnap her, he
could hold her against her will, he could sexually assault her,
and then in the same way that that elopement, which
was consensual would have to be, you know, could restore
that marriage. They would then come back with a woman
(02:13):
and say, well, you are now a tainted woman. If
your damaged goods, no one's going to marry you. So
if you want to restore your honor and you want
to have a family, one day and be married. Then
you have to marry me your maybe your captor and assault.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah. And so it's a no win situation here, right,
because if you wanted to be not ostracized by your community,
if you wanted to ever get married, because no one
would marry you after you were essentially teened goods because
you had been sexually assaulted by this man. The only
way out of it was to consent to this rehabilitating
(02:51):
marriage because it would restore your honor and then also conveniently,
it erased any criminal act that had led to that marriage. Legally,
it let the man off the hook for kidnapping in
sexual assault because the woman had married her him, even
though she had no choice. If she ever wanted to
get married and say, have kids, her only chance now
(03:13):
was with the man who had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her.
That's just how that worked.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah. So this was a thing that went seemingly completely
unchallenged as far as anyone knows, until the mid nineteen sixties,
when a woman named Franka Viola came along and said no.
In nineteen sixty three, in her hometown of Alcamo, she
(03:38):
was fifteen years old, she was engaged to a twenty
three year old nephew of a Sicilian mafioso. His name
was Filippo Melodia, and they were headed toward marriage, but
he got nabbed for a crime for theft. Six months
into their engagement, she broke it off. He fled to
Germany to escape this, going to prison basically, and while
(04:02):
he was gone she became engaged. She fell in love
to another guy, this guy she grew up with named
Giuseppe Ruisi, her former fiance. I guess Melodia came back
in nineteen sixty five, said I want you back, and
she said, no, I really love this guy. I'm staying
with him.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah. So Melodia kept trying over and over again to
win her back, and she kept saying no every time,
so as each time he was becoming angrier and angrier,
and also he was humiliated every time that she turned
him down. So he hatched a plan where he would
kidnap Franca from her home. He and fifteen other men
did on the day after Christmas in nineteen sixty five,
(04:44):
and he held her at a farmhouse and he sexually
assaulted her there over the course of a week, which
effectively triggered that matrimonial repertory, like it gave her no
choice at that point. Then after the week she was released,
and then as part of this custom, initially Melodia and
his accomplices were arrested, but the choice was up to
(05:06):
Franca to press charges or to marry the guy. That
was her choice. And again, up to this point, as
far as we know, every single woman put in this
position agreed to marry the person who kidnapped and sexually
assaulted her.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That's right. So I feel like that's halfway point. It's
a good time for a break, and we'll tell you
what happened right after this, all right. So I actually
(05:50):
kind of spoiled it earlier when I said that she
said no, But that's exactly what happened. Franca, very very
bravely decided to press charges, and like you said, she
was the first woman in modern times, maybe of all times,
to say I'm not participating in this. Even though her
honor was tarnished, her family's reputation was tarnished, They got threats,
(06:15):
their barn and their vineyard were burned down because remember
this is a nephew of a mafioso, so some heavy
things were going down and these guys were arraigned for trial.
It became an international story in nineteen sixty six. They
knew he did it, so it wasn't like did you
do it or not? He basically said no, no, no,
I was love sick. She loved me too, and it
(06:38):
was the parents who didn't approve. So this is just
like a good old fashioned eloping. What was that called,
It's like a good old fashioned fuitina. And she said this,
I am the property of no one. No one can
force me to love a person I do not respect.
Honor is lost by the one who does certain things,
not the one who was subjected to the right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
She also said to him directly from the stand, I
do not love you. I will not marry you. And
she was despite she was going against all custom. And again,
like I think it's worth pointing out, her family stood
by her and rather than pressuring her to do you
know what the community and society wanted her to do.
(07:23):
That was extremely brave of them as well, and in
return for her bravery and courage she won. Melodia lost
his case and because rape and kidnapping were still crimes
in Sicily and Italy, he was sentenced to eleven years
in prison, ended up serving ten, and seven of his
fifteen accomplices were received four year sentences each. And I
(07:48):
guess kind of joyously two years after Filippo Melodia got
out of prison, so he spent ten years in prison.
Within two years he'd been gunned down Modina in Italy
famous for its balsamic vannegar.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So the media, you know, got a hold this story,
like I said earlier, and you might think like the
media talked about like just how awful this was. They
did in a way, but the media in Italy also
talked about how pretty she was, and there were on
TV there were panel discussions where they talked to local
men about like, hey, like you know, she's good looking,
would you still marry her? And you know they were
(08:27):
all like no, I still wouldn't marry her. So the
media coverage was just very sexist and not fair. But
she did get married to Giuseppe. They were married December
nineteen sixty eight. She was twenty by this time, he
was twenty five years old, and it was a like
it was a national celebration basically when she got married.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, surprisingly there was a huge happy ending of this
Giuseppe's another person who deserves credit for standing by her too.
He was honestly the only chance. He was the only
man who could step up and restore her honor because
essentially she they got married under a matrimonial raprare. And yeah,
(09:11):
it was a celebration by the country, so much so
that Italy's president, and I think Mashable pointed this out,
Italy's president directly sent them a wedding president of forty dollars,
which would be over two hundred and fifty dollars today,
and the transport minister gave them a month of free
railway rides. So like this woman went rail pass Yeah,
(09:32):
pretty much. I mean a month of it. That's pretty
good for a newly whit couple, right. Yeah, So they
she went from scorned and people in the media talking
about how her life was basically over, she was going
to be a spinster to being celebrated in Italy by
the very people who had essentially tried to pressure her
into submitting to Melodia's advances.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, and this was nineteen sixty six when it happened.
He would think, well, in nineteen sixty seven, they probably
got rid of this thing, not so it wasn't. It
took till nineteen eighty one to repeal that law, which
is staggering. I can't believe it took that long.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, the foutina is still around in the rehabilitation. Marriage
is still around. But the key is that if you
rape the woman, you are no longer off the hook
if she marries you. And yeah, the fact that it
took more than a decade is a little unnerving, but
that was one of the things that she did. She
kind of shined an international spotlight on this really backwards custom,
(10:36):
and Italy and Sicily were kind of like shrinking a
little bit in the spotlight because it just made them
look so bad. So that was one thing she did.
And also she was credited for inspiring no less than
four women in the same situation to press charges on
their abductor and assault her by the time she even
(10:57):
got the trial. Who knows how many she she inspired
after that. So she changed this custom that was so
old you can't even tell when it would have began.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, for sure. If you do think, why haven't I
seen this movie, well you can. There's a filmmaker named
Marta Savina who had an award winning short film called Viola,
and she turned that into a feature film called Prima
Donna or The Girl from Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yes, and in an even happier part of the happy
ending on International Wednesday. In twenty fourteen, President Giorgio Napolitano
bestowed on Franca the honor of Grande Officiale del ordinae
el Marito della Republica Italiana, which means that she was
essentially knighted for her active bravery. Amazing, amazing, huge hat
(11:50):
tip to m I had never heard of Franko Viola
until she mentioned her to me. I think she sent
me an article a while back, so yeah, I appreciate that.
I think the whole world does now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Did she was it from the did she see the
movie or was it just from something she read.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
I think she ran across something like an article on
the internet and send it to me, So yeah, I
want to check check out that movie. Let's see what
that's like. Yeah, and a huge hat tip to Franco
Viola too for being so brave. That's just what an
amazing story. Agreed Chucks That agreed short Stuff is out.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Chuck's here and Jerry's here for Dave, So that makes
this an official short stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right, And we're going to issue a trigger warning
on this one. Part of the story has to do
with sexual assault, so we just wanted to kind of
let everyone know that that's coming. But ultimately this is
a story of courage and bravery.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yeah. So if you go down to Sicily and southern
Italy and ask them what a fou atina is, they
will say, huh, we don't really do that anymore, but
we'll tell you what it is anyway. It means sudden escape,
and in its most benign form, it was a way
for couples who were consenting. They wanted to get married,
(00:44):
but their families were like, no, we don't approve of
this union, and therefore you can't get married. It was
a way for them to elope all right. So the
fu atina was essentially an elopement. The key to the
fu atina, though, was that the couple would wait a
little while, say a week, and then they would return
home and their families would presume that over the course
(01:07):
of that week this couple had had premarital sex. So
when they came back, the couple was like, now you
have to agree to letting us get married. And in fact,
it's going to be a specific type of marriage that's
prescribed by law and socially it's called the matrimonial repertory.
It's called a rehabilitating marriage. Right.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
That's right, and that was a legal thing. It was
a socially accepted thing to where you could restore honor
to that bride. It was a loophole if he wanted
to get married and your parents didn't like he were
getting married to. But there was a very dark version
of this in which a man could take a woman
(01:51):
that he wanted to marry even if she didn't want to.
He could take her away, he could kidnap her, he
could hold her against her will, he could sexually assault her,
and then in the same way that that elopement, which
was consensual would have to be, you know, could restore
that marriage. They would then come back with a woman
(02:13):
and say, well, you are now a tainted woman. If
your damaged goods, no one's going to marry you. So
if you want to restore your honor and you want
to have a family, one day and be married. Then
you have to marry me your maybe your captor and assault.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah. And so it's a no win situation here, right,
because if you wanted to be not ostracized by your community,
if you wanted to ever get married, because no one
would marry you after you were essentially teened goods because
you had been sexually assaulted by this man. The only
way out of it was to consent to this rehabilitating
(02:51):
marriage because it would restore your honor and then also conveniently,
it erased any criminal act that had led to that marriage. Legally,
it let the man off the hook for kidnapping in
sexual assault because the woman had married her him, even
though she had no choice. If she ever wanted to
get married and say, have kids, her only chance now
(03:13):
was with the man who had kidnapped and sexually assaulted her.
That's just how that worked.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah. So this was a thing that went seemingly completely
unchallenged as far as anyone knows, until the mid nineteen sixties,
when a woman named Franka Viola came along and said no.
In nineteen sixty three, in her hometown of Alcamo, she
(03:38):
was fifteen years old, she was engaged to a twenty
three year old nephew of a Sicilian mafioso. His name
was Filippo Melodia, and they were headed toward marriage, but
he got nabbed for a crime for theft. Six months
into their engagement, she broke it off. He fled to
Germany to escape this, going to prison basically, and while
(04:02):
he was gone she became engaged. She fell in love
to another guy, this guy she grew up with named
Giuseppe Ruisi, her former fiance. I guess Melodia came back
in nineteen sixty five, said I want you back, and
she said, no, I really love this guy. I'm staying
with him.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah. So Melodia kept trying over and over again to
win her back, and she kept saying no every time,
so as each time he was becoming angrier and angrier,
and also he was humiliated every time that she turned
him down. So he hatched a plan where he would
kidnap Franca from her home. He and fifteen other men
did on the day after Christmas in nineteen sixty five,
(04:44):
and he held her at a farmhouse and he sexually
assaulted her there over the course of a week, which
effectively triggered that matrimonial repertory, like it gave her no
choice at that point. Then after the week she was released,
and then as part of this custom, initially Melodia and
his accomplices were arrested, but the choice was up to
(05:06):
Franca to press charges or to marry the guy. That
was her choice. And again, up to this point, as
far as we know, every single woman put in this
position agreed to marry the person who kidnapped and sexually
assaulted her.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
That's right. So I feel like that's halfway point. It's
a good time for a break, and we'll tell you
what happened right after this, all right. So I actually
(05:50):
kind of spoiled it earlier when I said that she
said no, But that's exactly what happened. Franca, very very
bravely decided to press charges, and like you said, she
was the first woman in modern times, maybe of all times,
to say I'm not participating in this. Even though her
honor was tarnished, her family's reputation was tarnished, They got threats,
(06:15):
their barn and their vineyard were burned down because remember
this is a nephew of a mafioso, so some heavy
things were going down and these guys were arraigned for trial.
It became an international story in nineteen sixty six. They
knew he did it, so it wasn't like did you
do it or not? He basically said no, no, no,
I was love sick. She loved me too, and it
(06:38):
was the parents who didn't approve. So this is just
like a good old fashioned eloping. What was that called,
It's like a good old fashioned fuitina. And she said this,
I am the property of no one. No one can
force me to love a person I do not respect.
Honor is lost by the one who does certain things,
not the one who was subjected to the right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
She also said to him directly from the stand, I
do not love you. I will not marry you. And
she was despite she was going against all custom. And again,
like I think it's worth pointing out, her family stood
by her and rather than pressuring her to do you
know what the community and society wanted her to do.
(07:23):
That was extremely brave of them as well, and in
return for her bravery and courage she won. Melodia lost
his case and because rape and kidnapping were still crimes
in Sicily and Italy, he was sentenced to eleven years
in prison, ended up serving ten, and seven of his
fifteen accomplices were received four year sentences each. And I
(07:48):
guess kind of joyously two years after Filippo Melodia got
out of prison, so he spent ten years in prison.
Within two years he'd been gunned down Modina in Italy
famous for its balsamic vannegar.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
So the media, you know, got a hold this story,
like I said earlier, and you might think like the
media talked about like just how awful this was. They
did in a way, but the media in Italy also
talked about how pretty she was, and there were on
TV there were panel discussions where they talked to local
men about like, hey, like you know, she's good looking,
would you still marry her? And you know they were
(08:27):
all like no, I still wouldn't marry her. So the
media coverage was just very sexist and not fair. But
she did get married to Giuseppe. They were married December
nineteen sixty eight. She was twenty by this time, he
was twenty five years old, and it was a like
it was a national celebration basically when she got married.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, surprisingly there was a huge happy ending of this
Giuseppe's another person who deserves credit for standing by her too.
He was honestly the only chance. He was the only
man who could step up and restore her honor because
essentially she they got married under a matrimonial raprare. And yeah,
(09:11):
it was a celebration by the country, so much so
that Italy's president, and I think Mashable pointed this out,
Italy's president directly sent them a wedding president of forty dollars,
which would be over two hundred and fifty dollars today,
and the transport minister gave them a month of free
railway rides. So like this woman went rail pass Yeah,
(09:32):
pretty much. I mean a month of it. That's pretty
good for a newly whit couple, right. Yeah, So they
she went from scorned and people in the media talking
about how her life was basically over, she was going
to be a spinster to being celebrated in Italy by
the very people who had essentially tried to pressure her
into submitting to Melodia's advances.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, and this was nineteen sixty six when it happened.
He would think, well, in nineteen sixty seven, they probably
got rid of this thing, not so it wasn't. It
took till nineteen eighty one to repeal that law, which
is staggering. I can't believe it took that long.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Yeah, the foutina is still around in the rehabilitation. Marriage
is still around. But the key is that if you
rape the woman, you are no longer off the hook
if she marries you. And yeah, the fact that it
took more than a decade is a little unnerving, but
that was one of the things that she did. She
kind of shined an international spotlight on this really backwards custom,
(10:36):
and Italy and Sicily were kind of like shrinking a
little bit in the spotlight because it just made them
look so bad. So that was one thing she did.
And also she was credited for inspiring no less than
four women in the same situation to press charges on
their abductor and assault her by the time she even
(10:57):
got the trial. Who knows how many she she inspired
after that. So she changed this custom that was so
old you can't even tell when it would have began.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, for sure. If you do think, why haven't I
seen this movie, well you can. There's a filmmaker named
Marta Savina who had an award winning short film called Viola,
and she turned that into a feature film called Prima
Donna or The Girl from Tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yes, and in an even happier part of the happy
ending on International Wednesday. In twenty fourteen, President Giorgio Napolitano
bestowed on Franca the honor of Grande Officiale del ordinae
el Marito della Republica Italiana, which means that she was
essentially knighted for her active bravery. Amazing, amazing, huge hat
(11:50):
tip to m I had never heard of Franko Viola
until she mentioned her to me. I think she sent
me an article a while back, so yeah, I appreciate that.
I think the whole world does now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Did she was it from the did she see the
movie or was it just from something she read.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
I think she ran across something like an article on
the internet and send it to me, So yeah, I
want to check check out that movie. Let's see what
that's like. Yeah, and a huge hat tip to Franco
Viola too for being so brave. That's just what an
amazing story. Agreed Chucks That agreed short Stuff is out.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
For more podcasts, my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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