The TV series on Sarah Scazzi

Translated by Andrea Solazzo

The case of Sarah Scazzi deeply affected Italy, triggering a media resonance that continues to this day, years later. Together with the murder of Yara Gambirasio, it marked an entire generation. The current trend of producing true crime television series has also invested the Avetrana murder, but it has also raised important ethical and legal questions.

On August 26, 2010, Sarah Scazzi, a 15-year-old girl from Avetrana, a town in the province of Taranto, suddenly disappeared. After months of searching, based on the confession of her uncle, Michele Misseri, her body was found, marking the beginning of a lengthy judicial process that involved the entire family and led to the conviction of Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano, Sarah's cousin and aunt, for murder and the conviction of Michele Misseri for conspiracy to commit corpse suppression. The affair turned into such a media case that the Apulian town was hit by dark tourism. Dark tourism is an ever-increasing phenomenon that takes the form of tourist visits to places where tragedies, highly including media-driven murders, have occurred.

The mayor of Avetrana, Antonio Iazzi, on 21 October 2024, four days after the broadcasting of the series, filed an interlocutory appeal requesting that the series should not be broadcast and that the name should be changed, invoking the need to protect the reputation of the entire community of Avetrana, "[. ... based on the fact that such a name could lead the users of the film product to associate the town of Avetrana with the crime story, arousing in them the idea of a potentially criminogenic, retrograde and based on a code of silence community". An interlocutory appeal, pursuant to art. 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is a special emergency measure that a person may request from the judge when he has well-founded reason to believe that one of his rights is threatened by imminent and irreparable harm. In this case, the right at stake is the protection of the image of the community and the municipality of Avetrana.

The mayor's request puts a crucial issue in the spotlight: the balance between freedom of expression and the protection of the right to the image of an entire community. The Italian Constitution guarantees the right to express one's thoughts in Article 21, from which the right to news reporting derives, but provides for limits when it is necessary to protect people's dignity. In the case of true crime series, these rules clash with the growing media interest, which often leads to a spectacularised narration of crimes to the detriment of the sensitivity of the victims' families.

In addition, victims' relatives have the right to be protected from continuous media exposure, which, over time, may represent a form of additional trauma. However, freedom of expression could prevail, as it is a fundamental right, the foundation of a society that can be called democratic, as the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly emphasised. The European Court has made it clear that freedom of expression ‘covers not only opinions that are welcome or considered harmless, but also those that may shock, shock or disturb’, as in the present case. Censoring a television series of this kind could severely undermine freedom of expression.

However, there are concerns related to ethical issues. True crime series are an ever-expanding genre. The combination of entertainment and news attracts a wide and varied audience, fascinated by the complexity of crimes and the dark side of human nature. Often, these series tend to create a fictionalised version of events, sacrificing accuracy for greater drama. This can lead to an indirect influence on the public perception of cases that are not yet closed or already concluded.

The case of the series on Sarah Scazzi, shortly after that of Yara Gambirasio, highlights the urgency of finding a balance between the right to report, protection of the dignity of victims and convicted persons, and public sensitivity. While the narration of criminal facts can be useful to better understand the workings of justice and to investigate the darkness of the human soul, it is crucial that it does not become a means to spectacularise pain.

In a society increasingly hungry for dramatic stories, it is important to remember that, behind the news cases, there are lives that deserve respect.

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