On October 8th 1600 A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare was published by Thomas Fisher. On a 2024 midsummer night in Northern Italy a young woman, Sharon Verzeni, 33 years old, popped out of her home for a night walk when her short and fatal midsummer nightmare started. In fact, minutes later someone attacked her and after managing to call the local ambulance service for help she died. Whilst hardworking investigators and prosecutors immediately began their work as August was about to start, journalists needing a scandal for the Italian midsummer embarked on a campaign against Scientology given that the victim had attended some courses at the local mission of this religious organization.
Several articles containing anything but facts about Scientology were circulated for over four weeks and this was a good occasion for organizations fighting against New Religious Movements (that they label as cults) to spread additional hatred against Scientology and its members showing no care for the family and the community that was mourning the death of Sharon. Bitter Winter with a piece signed by its editor in chief Massimo Introvigne has called for an apology, which most likely will never arrive.
Italy, The Homicide of Sharon Verzeni: Will the Media Apologize to Scientology?
A young woman who took Scientology courses was assassinated. Before it came out that the crime had nothing to do with Scientology, some media and anti-cultists used the tragedy to attack the church.
by Massimo Introvigne — In the night between July 29 and 30, 2024, a 33-year-old Italian woman called Sharon Verzeni put her tennis shoes on and left her home in the small Northern Italian town of Terno d’Isola for one of the quick walks recommended by her dietologist to lose weight. One hour thereafter, she called the emergency line from her cell phone and managed to say she had been repeatedly stabbed with a knife on the road. She was taken to the Pope John XXII Hospital in the nearby city of Bergamo but was not able to supply other details of the attack, as she quickly lost consciousness and died.
As it always happens in similar cases, Sharon’s partner, a man with whom she had had a relationship for thirteen years and was about to marry, was grilled by the police for several days. He was never formally investigated, though, as video cameras were functioning both on the main and the back door of the house where he lived with Sharon and confirmed that only the woman went out that night. By collecting gossip, not surprisingly the police heard reports of occasional quarrels within the couple, but in general theirs was described as a loving relationship.
With the police unable to identify, for several week, the author of the horrible crime, “somebody” leaked to the media the information that Sharon was a Scientologist. Although she had started attending Scientology courses recently, the police examined her bank accounts and found she had transferred (comparatively small sums of) money to the church to pay for them. Anti-cultists started to blame Scientology on social media. It is well-known, it was argued, that Scientology manipulates its “victims” into paying for expensive courses, and perhaps the partner (who is not a Scientologist) had quarreled with Sharon because of this. He categorically denied that this had been the case, though, and called the whole argument part of “inventions by journalists.”
At any rate, the idea that the crime had “something to do” with Scientology had been launched. Not having new information to feed on their readers on the crime, several Italian media devoted articles to Scientology and some reported the opinions of the anti-cultists. The main daily newspaper in Rome contacted CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, of which I am the managing director. Even they, however, reported the information on Scientology in a quite confused way.
In fact, the only possibility that the homicide might have had something to do with Scientology was that it might have been a hate crime against the religious minority. Such crimes against Scientology are not unknown. In 2018, I was the guest editor of a special issue of the authoritative “Journal of Religion and Violence” on new religious movements and reported several violent attacks against Scientology in my introduction. In 2019, a 16-year-old boy who wanted to “rescue” his mother from Scientology entered the premises of the church in Sydney and stabbed to death a 24-year-old Taiwanese Scientologist. Some Australian media, which have a history of hostility against Scientology, and international anti-cultists made a laughable attempt to claim that the homicide of a Scientologist by the son, hostile to Scientology, of another Scientologist, within a Scientology church, had nothing to do with Scientology and simply derived from the psychiatric problems of the teenager. Yes, sure. Obviously the existence of psychiatric problems did not exclude the hate against Scientology. As they say, real paranoids have real enemies.
However, as I told some journalists, I did not believe this was the case with Sharon. When members of unpopular religions are victims of violence, it certainly does make sense to investigate the anti-cult underworld. However, Italian anti-cultists may not be model citizens, but their violence is usually verbal rather than physical. The anti-cult profiteering that went on by disrespecting the memory of poor Sharon to attack Scientology was in itself a form of violence—disgusting, yes, but again not a physical one.
Happily, after one month of investigations, the assassin was identified and confessed. He was a failed songwriter, currently unemployed, with both drug and violence problems, who went out that night determined to kill somebody randomly chosen. Sharon was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The killer, one Moussa Sangare, is an Italian citizen born in Milan thirty-one years ago, whose parents came from Mali. He excluded any ideological or religious motivation, and to blame immigration because of its African origins would amount to just more political profiteering, not less obnoxious than blaming Scientology. Unfortunately, similar crimes have been perpetrated by Italians whose parents are not immigrants as well.
Scientology might have had something to say about the case. Moussa Sangare represents just another unpaid check of politics failing to control drug addicts and persons with mental health problems even when incidents have already revealed they are turning violent. These are social issues Scientology takes a well-known interest in. Instead, Italian Scientologists had to spend their time countering the stupidity of those who saw a “Scientology connection” in a crime that had nothing to do with religion. An apology to Scientology would be in order. Probably, it will not follow.
Source: Bitter Winter
