the story of the young woman evicted from her home after revealing her sexual orientation

The story of Malika Chalhy, a 22-year-old girl who was disowned and kicked out of her home after revealing to her parents that she was a lesbian, shocked Italy and highlighted the discrimination and mistreatment some LGTB people mean by living openly their sexuality.

Malika fell in love with another young woman and confessed to her family. Indignant by this revelation, at the beginning of the year, their daughter was evicted from the family home. Her parents even refused to give her clothes, leaving her completely alone, without even a spare shirt. They kicked her out of the house to the point that they changed the lock so that Malika could not come back to collect her things.

Homeless to sleep and in a desperate attempt to get something to wear, Malika showed up to her home, escorted by police. But once he knocked on the door, his mother looked out the window and exclaimed to the officers: “I do not know this person.”

The young woman also received threats, which she reported and recorded on her mobile phone. “If you come back we’ll kill you, better 50 years in prison than a lesbian girl” or “better a drug addict girl than a lesbian.” Other people are lucky because they have normal children. Only we stink like that ”, are some of the insults Malika must have heard from her own parents.

Malika, from Castelfiorentino, told her story to various Italian media and reported her situation to the Florence public prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation. According to Malika Chalhy’s testimony, her father and her brother, three years older than her, also attacked the young woman with insults. Given the threats he received from his brother at Easter, Chalhy justified making his story public.

The case, which quickly caught on on social networks and the media, shocked a large part of the Italian population. Human rights associations, personalities from the world of entertainment and sport have expressed their solidarity with the young Tuscan.

A collection was organized via the Internet which collected in a few days more than 100,000 euros, money that the young woman will use to become independent and cover the legal costs of the process she has already initiated against her family. Today, the young woman has not lived in her house for four months.

“I’m not the one who should be ashamed of. I’m not the one who isn’t normal. It is not normal to hit a child or to insult him for who he is or chooses to be, it is not normal to judge and point fingers at others, it is not normal to blame someone. ‘one just because he’s gay,’ said the victim.

Asked about his version of what happened, Samir Chalhy, the young woman’s brother, told the local press that his sister “does not tell the whole truth”, in reference to the fact that the young woman would not have shown audios in which parents ask them to come home and his brother told him that he could lodge him in the Piedmont city of Alexandria.

Likewise, Samir Chalhy was justified in the interview by the insults towards his sister and the threats pointing out that these were sentences he uttered in “a moment of anger, after trying to contact her for several hours. months ”and that these are things he will never say again. “.

In addition, the young man specifies that his sister exposes his story because “there is money at stake” and defends his parents by saying that “they did not deserve” to be denounced.

The case also comes at a time when the approval of the Zan Bill (named after Democratic Party MP Alessandro Zan), aimed at tackling discrimination and violence based on orientation, gender and identity. , is debated in the country of the genre. The bill proposes to fill a legislative gap related to the protection of LGBT people.

In fact, the law in force in Italy, known as the Mancino law dating from 1993, does not provide for penalties for those who commit or incite to commit acts of violence based on a person’s sexual orientation. The law only punishes violence on racial, ethnic, religious or national grounds. Currently, the Zan law is blocked in Parliament and sparks many heated debates between those for and against.