This piece includes references to sexual assault and gender-based violence.
Rome, 1975.
A woman is awakened by the screams of an entrapped girl in the boot of a Fiat 127. Soon, police and residents would come to find a girl bruised and battered, and the corpse of her best friend.
On 19th September, 17-year-old Rosaria Lopez and 19-year-old Donatella Colasanti were invited to the movies by a group of boys they had only recently met. They were then taken to a villa on the outskirts of Rome, in Circeo, where, over the following 35 hours, the two girls were exposed to all kinds of violence.
With a horrific story like this, where do we even begin?
At the time of the Circeo Massacre, rape was not considered a crime against the victim-survivor, but against public morality. In other words, the act of rape was considered immoral instead of illegal. This law had been established almost 40 years prior by Benito Mussolini in 1936, and reflected the fascist mentality of 1930s Italy: a mentality where women were restricted in all aspects of life.
In an interview conducted in 1983, Donatella Colasanti described the assault as “[qualcosa] che va al di là dello stupro…”. Translated, “[something] that goes beyond rape…” What happened was a premeditated murder. The killing of the two girls always existed as an intentional plan.
Andrea Ghira, Gianni Guido, and Angelo Izzo were the names of the three men responsible for this crime. They were linked to fascist parties and organisations, and considered the kidnap, rape, and murder of two working-class girls ‘entertainment’. The group of boys had met at Il Fungo (The Mushroom), a long-time meeting spot for fascists. The mentality of these men came down to one thing: how can we prove ourselves as men?
To understand the evil of these boys, we must enter the walls of their school, San Leone Magno. A prestigious all-boys Catholic school, which served the principles of misogyny, classism, and fascism. The school in question was religious, but what mattered more was the fact that the student body consisted exclusively of males. They would enrol at the age of six and they left at the age of 19. For these 13 years of schooling, they would only have males as classmates and teachers. It was a laboratory, where male identity was created, and then reinforced with a relentless process of negation.
Following the Circeo Massacre and the three boys’ trial, they were all, initially, given life sentences. Andrea Ghira died in Morocco in 1994 after eluding arrest and having lived all his life as a fugitive. Gianni Guido, due to a sentence reduction, has been free since 2009. And Angelo Izzo, as soon as he was released on parole for good conduct in 2005, killed two more women: a mother and her daughter. In other words, the past wasn’t the past at all. Rosaria Lopez’s death and Donatella Colasanti’s torture ignited a debate that only concluded in 1996, more than twenty years after the events of the massacre, when Italian law was changed, and sexual violence was finally considered a crime against the victim-survivor.
This radicalisation of young men and their insolent perspectives towards women continues to grow worse, particularly with the use of social media. The truth is, parents don’t know what their children are getting up to, especially when they have access to a smartphone. With social media at the fingertips of all curious young minds, teenage boys have easy access to misogynistic rhetoric; namely Andrew Tate, who installs a revolting hatred towards women, as well as the concept of ‘incel culture’. This reflects directly onto the younger generations of men, creating a toxic, hatred-filled environment.
Last year, six students were expelled, and 21 suspended, following a bullying incident at the University of Sydney-aligned St Paul’s College. The episode involved a group of students who decided to conduct a ‘mock trial’ on a fellow student, in which the victim was allegedly gagged and abused. Toxic masculinity and extreme misogyny, particularly in all boys prestigious schools, has been revolutionising education internationally for decades. In an article published by The Guardian, a survey concluded that “teachers were being propositioned, threatened with rape, asked for nude photos, physically intimated, and having their classes disturbed by young male students moaning sexually during class — even in primary school.” As someone who attended a co-ed public school only three years ago, these accounts are unfortunately unsurprising.
We are raising generations of boys who are more liable to develop violent mannerisms. We have already seen them escalate into extreme cases, most importantly reflected in violence against women and girls. From 1970 to 2025, it is heartbreaking to see that extreme patriarchal violence continues to exist and increase. Between highly accessible media coverage, and the private school community’s sheltering from the truth, boys have become more vulnerable to inheriting the wrong kinds of behaviours. Because of this, violence against women continues to exist, and as it continues to increase, adolescent girls will continue to face elevated risks of gender-based violence. Adolescent girls like Donatella Colassanti and Rosaria Lopez.
