‘Silence does not protect’: thoughts on a National Day that concerns us all

On Monday 5 May 2025, I had the privilege of speaking at the conference "Silence does not protect. Sexual abuse is everyone's problem", organised by the Foundation Sos Telefono Azzurro and held at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

It was an essential yet rare institutional opportunity, marking the National Day against paedophilia and child pornography, to draw attention to a topic that still too often remains concealed because it is taboo.

I spoke with a contribution dedicated to the security of digital spaces: a concept so topical that it seems almost overdue, and which deserves to be discussed, questioned, reimagined.

Safety, meaning what?

The heart of my talk was an invitation to shift the focus from the question ‘How can we make digital spaces safe?’ to a more radical question: ‘Safe, in what sense?’

Because safety is never neutral. It is always the result of a negotiation: among what we want to protect, what we fear and who has the power to decide.

An environment that looks safe from the point of view of adults or institutions may not be safe at all for vulnerable teenagers. Safety is not only built through filters, regulations or technology: it is above all a matter of participation.

Digital is not an elsewhere

Children do not experience the digital dimension as something separated from ‘real life’. They inhabit it, use it to seek relationships, shelters, expressions of identity. In these same spaces they can also be exposed to invisible forms of violence: manipulation, isolation, sextortion, hate language.

If we want to talk seriously about safeguarding in the digital world, we must rethink the web: not as a territory to be guarded, but as a space to be co-inhabited responsibly.

The value of tough questions

In my talk, I chose not to offer definitive solutions, but to raise questions. Questions that also guide me in my research with survivors of childhood abuse.

Questions like this:

Do we really know how to read the language of the youngest, when it expresses itself in emoji, memes, silences, disconnections?

I quoted a scene from the Netflix series Adolescence, in which adults' failure to recognise the meaning of certain emoji delays their understanding of an abuse case. A seemingly trivial detail, but one that reveals much: we cannot protect those we do not understand.

Safety is about relationships

I take home from this day a profound confirmation: safety is not just a technical and legal issue, but an ethical and cultural one. It requires that we change our way of listening, of designing, of inhabiting spaces together with those who are most vulnerable.

It requires society – every subject that makes it up, including me writing and you reading – to take responsibility for breaking the silence and transforming it into active, lasting, real listening.

The National Day Against Paedophilia and Child Pornography is not just a calendar date. It is a collective reminder: abuse is never a private problem. It is a social, cultural, relational problem. And it affects us all.

And in Italy, since 2013, there has been a grassroots movement that gathers this commitment, day after day, together with the survivors of child abuse and mistreatment: it is called Meti Onlus, and this year too it has launched a powerful awareness-raising campaign. For this edition, the title is #NonFinisceQuandoFinisce, a strong invitation to reflect on the consequences that sexual abuse in childhood or adolescence carries into adult life.