Franca Viola, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetFranca Viola
Kidnap and rape victim. Successfully challenged Italy's marry-your-rapist law (Penal Code art. 544) in court in 1966.
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Alcamo, Sicily, Italy
About Franca Viola
- Franca Viola (born 9 January 1948) is an Italian woman who became famous in the 1960s in Italy for refusing a "rehabilitating marriage" (Italian: matrimonio riparatore) with her victimiser after suffering kidnapping and rape.
- She was one of the first Italian women who had been raped to publicly refuse to marry her rapist.
- Instead, she and her family successfully appealed to the law to prosecute the rapist.
- The trial had a wide resonance in Italy, as Viola's behavior clashed with the traditional social conventions in Southern Italy, whereby a woman would lose her honour if she did not marry the man to whom she lost her virginity.
- Franca Viola thus became a symbol of the cultural progress and the emancipation of women in post-war Italy.
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