A scandal that shook Italian politics

When the scandal broke with him at the center, Piero Marrazzo was a politician on the rise: after hosting for years the consumer favorite program ‘Mi manda Rai3’, in 2005 he became president of the Lazio Region, with the support of the Union, the coalition that a year later would bring Romano Prodi to Palazzo Chigi. But in October 2009 news began to emerge that would end his political career and more: a video showing him in the company of a trans woman, Natalie. With that video, four carabinieri tried to blackmail him: in 2010, the Supreme Court recognized the “conspiracy” of the unfaithful agents. After a few days of furious controversy, Marrazzo raised the white flag and left the role of regional president, paving the way for an early election that would see the victory of Renata Polverini. The disturbing curiosities of that story were several, starting with the unclear deaths of two people: the mediator of the sale of the video, found dead of an overdose a month before the scandal, and another trans woman, Brenda , suffocated at home by a fire. Natalie, the trans woman in the Marrazzo case, destroys a bar in Cassia: arrested for attempted extortion and damage. The interview 15 years later Almost 15 years after the events, Marrazzo confesses to the Corriere della Sera on the occasion of the publication of his book, ‘Storia senza eroi’, in which he sheds light on what happened in 2009.” Silence is not good: my daughters, with their love, helped me understand that our life could not be reduced to a case, to a scandal, but was much more”. “Silence crushes”, he says Marrazzo, “I had dealt with Health and Waste, that whoever touches dies, and never a suspicion or an investigation. But for this exhibition, they asked me to stand by.” “If I had been a woman…” Marrazzo has three daughters: Giulia and Diletta, from his first marriage with Isolina Fiorucci, and Chiara, from his second marriage with Roberta Serdoz: a marriage that ended precisely in 2009, because in the wake of the scandal, her spouse decided to leave him. “I have no doubt, what he had done was not appropriate for a public man,” he explains, “no he had fulfilled his obligation to the institutions. And then especially my most serious fault, towards the family: for shame. , I hadn’t insured my daughters and my wife Roberta.” “I’m sure,” he continues, “that if he had been with a prostitute, the impact would have been much less.” Resignations In that case, he says, the match was like a court: “I have a libertarian vocation, always attentive to civil rights. I am convinced that the left is not a Church, and that politics should not get into people’s underwear.” At the time of the events, Pier Luigi Bersani and Dario Franceschini “asked me to step back for reasons of opportunity and I accepted, I have no recrimination against them. Napolitano said to me: I am close to you as a man. But the media. and the moralistic condemnation – he continues – was very strong, ordinary people, those I had met as an administrator or who followed me at ‘Mi Manda Rai3’, were less critical. The treatment of the three daughters Precisely the three daughters, Giulia, Diletta and Chiara, write powerful passages in the book. “They didn’t spare me, I didn’t want them, nor did society because of how they treated us. I’m here, lucky and strong, I have their love. They taught me how to forgive a parent for not having protected them.” The treatment the daughters received, during this period, is inhuman: homophobic writings against their father, from “at least Berlusconi hits hot chicks” to “Marrazzo likes cock”. Giulia, Diletta and Chiara explain them in the book, without discounts. Someone, during those weeks, asked them when their father would kill himself. “I never thought about suicide, there was a narrative that seemed to want to push me towards suicide. I was endlessly tired.” The discovery of brother Riccardo After the scandal and the resignation, Marrazzo traveled to the USA in search of his roots and discovered something unexpected about his brother Riccardo: “His father, whom we never met, and who was denied the right to be a father because of his sexual orientation”. A story linked to grandfather Eugenio, mother Gina Spina’s father, described as a man of indescribable violence. “After a lifetime, I told my brother the story of his father, which he did not know and which he had just learned. He said to me: ‘I would have expected that, considering what Grandpa Eugenio had done, my father and mother have done more.”