She had sex with her boyfriend, but was afraid of being blamed and punished by her parents, therefore she claimed to have been raped by a young gypsy boy. Her story caused a popular riot setting fire to a gypsy field. Carabinieri immediately understood the girl was lying, but the racist group of people waiting for a long time to get rid of gypsies, just didn’t care for the truth. They only wanted to throw gypsies out of their neighborhood.

It was a scary night for hundreds of people. The day after the truth was discovered, and the young girl apologized in public. Anyway, her lies caused desperation and misfortune to innocent outcasts’ families, but she could be justified. Turin newspapers report fundamental details about the girl’s problematic youth. Her family used to make the girl undergo gynaecological check ups every month, to check her virginity. This detail hasn’t yet been confirmed, but if true, it would allow us to discover unexpected, tribal habits.

Baron Cefalù’s Sicily doesn’t exist any longer, it has been buried together with all the laws encouraging death sentences for sensual sins. But old tribal ideas about virginity have been kept – chastity was thought to be more important than moral purity, and gynaecologists had to “mend” girls’ transgressions.

The current Piedmont cannot be represented properly on the basis of tribal custom of this 16-year-old girl’s family. But she has had to lie. Without the fear of gypsies – a shameful prejudice encouraged by years of creeping, political racism – the lie of the girl would have been kept in her family. But family’s tribal culture would have been kept secret as well.

This idea has disappeared in Sicily, but survives in the developed and “civilized” North of Italy. Everything has changed, but nobody seems to be aware of it.