Forget the godfather, meet the foster father.
A bizarre plan hatched 12 years ago by a fed-up Italian judge to force the kids of jailed mafiosi into foster care has worked out so well at keeping them on the straight and narrow that it’s expanding into the birthplace of La Cosa Nostra, the Times of London reported.
“It has been an extraordinary success,” Judge Roberto Di Bella told the outlet in a report Wednesday. “In Catania, kids as young as seven are sent out to be pushers, while parents take out younger children in prams as cover when they are transporting kilos of drugs.
“Now with the new protocol we can expect an important increase in the number of children involved — we can change the destiny of thousands of minors,” he said.
The controversial plan that was launched in Southern Italy to place kids of Italian mafia bosses with foster families to cut their inherited underworld ties are being tested out in Sicily after about 150 mob-tied children were relocated in Calabria over the years, the Times said.
Called “Free to Choose,” Di Bella hatched the program after growing tired of seeing generation after generation of organized crime figures following in their father’s footsteps.
“There’s a religious baptism and a mafioso baptism which is confirmed when you reach a certain age,” mob writer Antonio Nicaso told the BBC in 2013, shortly after the program launched.
Raised to be hoodlums, the kids included a mafia youngster charged with six murders and others who were ordered to kill their own mothers after they were unfaithful to their jailed mob husbands.
“So this means that often the children of bosses — particularly the firstborn — are predestined to follow in their father’s footsteps,” Nicaso said.
Once pulled free of their criminal birthright, many youngsters flourished, Di Bella found.
“I could see a light in the eyes of some of them,” he said, “and knew they could choose another path.”
First deployed against the Ndrangheta family, the plan had early critics — but eventually even won over some mobsters and saw about 30 mob wives opting to join their kids in state-funded new homes, the report said.
One jailed mob boss went so far as to thank Di Bella for sparing his four grandchildren from ‘The Life.’
“Free to Choose” is now being tried out in Catania, Sicily, once a mafia hotbed.
“This is a historic moment in the fight against the mafia,” said Carlo Nordio, Italy’s justice minister.
This article was originally posted here