The first day I showed up at court without a bag, without a change of clothes, without anything. I was innocent, and I had an almost childlike faith that justice was a beacon, a safe harbor. I thought justice protected the blameless.

Never would I have imagined that I wouldn't walk out of that courtroom free, but would end up swallowed by the abyss of a cell in the Rebibbia women's prison. Never would I have thought I'd experience firsthand the nightmare that engulfed great victims of Italian judicial error, like Enzo Tortora. And yet there I was, crushed by an absurd accusation and an unjust conviction, later overturned: I was acquitted because the fact did not exist. But the wound remains indelible.

Convicted by a scrap of paper.

The supposed proof of my guilt? A piece of paper with handwriting. I was so certain of the truth that I immediately consented to a handwriting analysis, convinced it would be entrusted to an expert. Instead, no: the presiding judge herself decided, alone, in a matter of minutes. Without an expert analysis, she decided my fate. In the courtroom, with the microphone accidentally left on, we all heard the sentence that froze the room: "What did I tell you? The handwriting is hers." For a second I thought I was the victim of an episode of "Scherzi a Parte." I looked around, scanning every corner of the courtroom searching for hidden cameras, convinced that at any moment someone would come out and tell me it was all a joke. But the chill that followed those words made me understand, with unbearable weight, that there was no script, no camera, and no director ready to stop the absurdity: it was all terribly real.

How can a judge influence the panel like that? How can a person be declared guilty based on an impression? These questions still echo inside me today.

My world and my family's world collapsed in an instant. Rebibbia: daily hell.

They took me to Rebibbia without giving me time to process. I wasn't even allowed a phone call to say goodbye to my underage daughter, to whom I had said: "See you soon," and I was given no informational document on how to behave in prison, on my rights, or on the rules to follow, given that I had no criminal record and was entering prison for the first time. For the first three days, I was in isolation, locked up 24 hours a day. Not one of the prison guards ever asked how I was doing, not even for a moment. To them I wasn't a person experiencing the shock of an arrest with a clean record, but just an inmate number to manage: no empathy, no interest, just the deafening void of those who have forgotten what it means to treat another human being.

To the doctor assigned to inmates in isolation, who merely rushed past the bars without ever opening the reinforced door, I said I felt a sharp pain in my throat and was struggling to breathe. His only response was to offer me a psychiatric visit, insisting on immediately administering a sedative. I refused, terrified at the idea of becoming dependent on drugs I didn't know and had never taken in my life. I said: "No thank you, I'm against drugs. I don't want psychiatric medication."

"Ma'am, psychiatric medication isn't drugs!" he replied indignantly. And yet in there they are the universal solution, the magic wand that calms, puts to sleep, annihilates. When I finally entered the ward, I understood: the drugs serve to sedate, to make manageable human beings pushed to the limit. As soon as I arrived, I asked for a hygiene kit — toothbrush, toothpaste, soap. I wasn't prepared, I had nothing.

The response was surreal: "It's Sunday, Caritas hasn't come by." Only by requesting a meeting with the warden did everything that was "unavailable" magically appear. I'm an entrepreneur, I know how to make myself heard. But the others? How many women enter that place without a voice, without strength, without rights? In a cell designed for one person there were four of us, amid smoke, suffocating heat, and the constant fear of being burned alive because someone, dazed by massive doses of methadone and medication, would fall asleep leaving lit cigarettes on the mattresses.

Every window was a blessing: whoever slept on the bunk bed near the only opening could breathe; the others suffocated in the heat, the sweat, the smoke. I don't smoke, but all my cellmates did. I had asthma attacks multiple times.

I signed up for medical visits, but was never called: there aren't enough doctors, there aren't enough instruments, there's nothing. And meanwhile, three times a day, the medication cart comes through and distributes antidepressants like candy.

An immense business, while the State saves on everything that would actually be needed to treat, rehabilitate, and reeducate. Prison with this level of overcrowding ruins not only mental health but above all physical health for those forced to endure others' secondhand smoke, because in no penitentiary institution do non-smoking areas exist. I consider this an unprecedented lack of respect and incivility. Prisons don't support detox programs for this addiction either, because it's another enormous business for the State: tobacco sales. Not to mention the excruciating noise of the keys, when they close the reinforced door and it makes an infernal noise... that noise is unbearable. The metallic sound of the keys and the reinforced door closing is something you never forget.

The walls are grey. Grey increases depression, and depression increases the consumption of psychiatric drugs. A perfect vicious circle. In there you suffer immensely over everything. You're afraid of getting sick because there aren't enough doctors. You're afraid your relatives won't make it in time to visit you, because a few minutes' delay is enough to deny them entry.

Most of society feels safer throwing away the key, not knowing that prison should be a place where you serve your sentence while trying to recover values and metabolize past mistakes — only then can you leave with awareness of your own conscience. Only then will society be safer for everyone, giving back people who are capable, aware, and ready to face their new life far from the mistakes they made.

Zero privacy: documents, letters, and personal belongings at anyone's mercy. When inmates leave the cell, nothing is safe: documents, letters, personal objects... anyone can read them, touch them, make them disappear. There is no protection, no safeguarding, no respect.

The greatest fear: being hurt by someone worse off than you. My great fortune was sleeping on the top bunk, near the window.

My great fear, instead, was the girl who slept below: a drug addict, she would fall asleep with a lit cigarette after her methadone dose. More than once the sheets started burning. I feared I would die like that: burned alive in a prison I should never have entered. I never told my children anything. In my letters I described a different reality so they wouldn't suffer. Prison: a place of punishment, not of torture. But today it's the exact opposite.

Most of society believes that behind bars are people you should "throw away the key" for. A comfortable, ignorant, cruel idea. Anyone who has never entered a prison should simply be silent.

Because only those who have seen it from inside understand what it means to be: deprived of air, of sleep, of health, locked up with people in crisis, violent, destroyed, fragile... Treated like livestock, not like human beings. Prison should reeducate, not annihilate. It should provide tools, not psychiatric drugs. It should return better citizens, not lifeless ghosts. I got out, acquitted, recognized as innocent. But I know that many women still live in there in inhumane conditions that society ignores. And this awareness tears me apart: when I was about to leave, looking them in the eyes, I felt guilty, as if I were abandoning them in a hell from which I alone had been lucky enough to escape. I, instead, thanks to the extraordinary skill of my defense lawyer, and the presence of an honest judge — one of those who still make you believe in justice, now close to retirement — finally got out.

A piece of my heart remained in there, with them. Women who have no voice, who have no means, who don't have a lawyer who truly defends them, and who every day serve not only their sentence but the abandonment of a country that prefers to look the other way. They are invisible: and it is precisely in that invisibility that the State allows certain injustices to continue unchecked. Prison as it is doesn't make society safer. It only makes it more blind. And until we understand that, we will continue to create monsters not among the inmates, but among our indifferences. Minister Nordio and the reality of overcrowding... Saying that overcrowding "helps prevent suicides" is a disgrace. The reality is that anyone who wants to end it all finds a way regardless, because most cellmates are sedated to the point of not noticing even if a tank drove through. Overcrowding doesn't save: it destroys. From a former magistrate I expect knowledge of the facts, not statements so far removed from reality. Enough with this ridiculous and offensive narrative. The light comes from the volunteers.

Salvation in a notebook: being heard by Rita Bernardini. Rita Bernardini was an example to me. She entered the ward for an inspection and listened to me, taking notes on my daily difficulties. In that gesture I saw hope: I understood that not all is lost, that someone still knows how to listen. In this system where loneliness is the most atrocious torture and the voices of female inmates are constantly silenced, I met Rita Bernardini. She stood out distinctly for the way she listened: with a deep, rare attention that made you feel like a person again.

Her notebook was for us inmates a kind of salvation. As she meticulously noted every problem and every injustice we suffered, we realized that this was the only space in the world where someone was truly listening to us, without prejudice. That notebook didn't just collect complaints — it restored dignity to those who were treated as numbers. In a place where no one truly listens, Rita's dedication was the only glimmer of humanity.

And then a young volunteer from the Municipality of Rome gave me a "survival kit" with flip-flops and hygiene products. For many it would be little, but for someone who has nothing, it's life. When I asked him for just a pair of shower flip-flops, he probably felt sorry for me and pulled out everything he had. That simple gesture was immense. In their eyes I saw the humanity that prison tries to erase. To them goes my infinite gratitude.

I got out, acquitted, thanks to the tenacity of my defense lawyer, attorney Stefano Giordano, and an honest judge, unfortunately now retired, who knew how to look beyond prejudice. But when I walked through the gate, I felt a lacerating sense of guilt looking into the eyes of the women who remained, abandoned in a hell that society pretends not to see.

Prison must not be a place of annihilation or of torture, but a place of reeducation. As long as we continue to treat human beings like livestock and replace rights with psychiatric drugs, we will have no justice, only oblivion. My journey into the abyss taught me that the time for rhetoric is over: it is time to dismantle this system and rebuild one worthy of a civilized country.

Shared suffering creates invisible but strong bonds. When you breathe the same air, endure the same injustices, the other's suffering becomes a little bit yours too. In that inhumanity I found solidarity, courage, and humanity: women who share a packet of biscuits as if it were gold, who hold each other up when the door slams and you feel like you're losing your mind. I'm not afraid of offending anyone by telling what I experienced. I only want to say that those who are treated like animals often have more heart than those who hold the keys to the cage.

This testimony of mine poses an urgent question: how much does the lack of listening and real protection transform prison into a place of annihilation rather than reeducation?