Franca Viola (born in Alcamo in 1947) is a Sicilian woman that became famous in the 1960s in Italy for refusing a "rehabilitating wedding" ("matrimonio riparatore" in Italian) after suffering kidnapping and rape. Instead, she and her family successfully appealed to the law to prosecute the rapists. The trial had a wide resonance in Italy, as Viola's behavior clashed with the traditional social conventions, whereby a woman would lose her honour if she did not marry the man she lost her virginity to. Franca Viola thus became a symbol of the cultural progress and the emancipation of women in post-war Italy.[1][2][3]
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Franca Viola was the daughter of a couple of farmers in Alcamo, Sicily. When she was 17, she was kidnapped along with her younger brother (who was released shortly thereafter) by Filippo Melodia, who had previously courted her without success. Melodia was also known to have relations with a powerful family of the local mafia.[1] Viola was repeatedly raped and segregated for 8 days. Viola's father pretended to come to terms with the kidnappers while actually collaborating with the Carabinieri police in preparing a successful dragnet operation. Viola was thus released and her kidnappers arrested.[4][5]
Melodia offered Viola a rehabilitating marriage, but she refused, thus acting against what was the common practice in the Sicilian society of the time. According to traditional social code, this choice would make her a "donna svergognata", i.e., a "woman without honour" (literally: a shameful woman), as she had lost her virginity without getting married. It is notable that these conceptions were not exclusive of Sicily or rural areas; to some extent, they were also implicit in the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure of the time, which equated rape to a crime against "public morality" rather than a personal offence, and formalized (in art. 544) the idea of a rehabilitating marriage, stating that a rapist who married his victim would have his crime automatically extinguished.[4]
After Viola refused to marry her rapist, her family were reportedly menaced and persecuted, to the point of having their vineyard and cottage burned to the ground. These events and the following trial had a wide resonance in the Italian media, and the Parliament itself was directly involved, as it became obvious that part of the existing code clashed with the public opinion. The lawyers of Melodia tried to maintain that Viola had consented to a so-called "fuitina" rather than being kidnapped, but the trial ended up with the conclusion that this was not the case and that Melodia was guilty. He was condemned to 11 years in jail.[4]
Franca Viola married a young man she loved since childhood, named Giuseppe Ruisi, on December 1968. Both the Italian President Giuseppe Saragat and Pope Paul VI publicly expressed their appreciation of Franca Viola's courage and their solidarity to the couple.[5] In 1970, director Damiano Damiani made the movie The Most Beautiful Wife, starring Ornella Muti, based on Viola's case.[4] Franca Viola, now a grandmother, still lives in Alcamo with her husband.
The article of law whereby a rapist could extinguish his crime by marrying his victim was abolished ten years later, in 1981.[6]