I’m not afraid to return to school”/ Teacher stabbed by 13-year-old student: I want to understand why he hated me

“Forgive him? I already have.” With these words, Isabella Marsilio, a teacher at the Giovanni Verga middle school in Rome, responded to the program “Dentro la Notizia” during a telephone interview in which she spoke about the 13-year-old student who attacked her with a knife in the classroom.

The teacher said that she entered the classroom at 9:00 a.m. to take attendance, and the boy’s name was also on the roll. It had long been arranged for the 13-year-old to make up an outstanding history assessment that morning.

While questioning another student, Marsilio noticed that the boy had entered the classroom wearing a cycling helmet and glasses with a camera in the center.

“No one would have imagined that he would approach me and attack me with a knife,” she said.

According to her account, the student was carrying a long, serrated knife, which he used to stab her three times on the left side of her body, near her armpit.

The teacher said that what shocked her most was not the wounds, but the way the boy looked at her. She recalled his gaze as cold and emotionless, adding that, in her view, the attack appeared to have been planned. This is the teacher’s personal interpretation.

Even after the incident, Isabella Marsilio said she was not afraid to return to teaching. She also said she was willing to meet with the student in an effort to understand what had caused his hatred toward her.

“I would like him to tell me where all this hatred toward me came from,” the teacher said.