The Rome court has acquitted the guard of a high school accused of sexually touching a 17-year-old student for ten seconds. Justice considered that the circumstances of the act, “almost of the touch”, did not constitute an offense. This sparked outrage in Italy.
A judgment of shame for the associations of parents of Italian pupils. On Thursday July 6, the court in Rome, Italy, acquitted a 66-year-old man, a school guard, who had sexually assaulted a 17-year-old girl. The man had touched for “about ten seconds” the buttocks of the teenager.
However, the judges considered that the “suddenness of the action, without any insistence in the action of touching”, relating “almost to the touch”, did not make it possible to “characterize the libidinous or lustful intention generally required by criminal law,” says a paper from Il Corriere della Serra.
According to the Italian daily, the facts date back to April 12, 2022, when the girl felt her pants fall from her hips. She told the judges that someone put their hands in her pants, under her panties, touching her buttocks. The girl realized it was the janitor, who left without saying a word.
For its part, the court rejected the requisitions of the prosecution, which had requested three and a half years in prison against the guard. He had claimed in court that it was a joke. She found these justifications “convincing”.
“I hope the prosecutor will appeal”
For her part, the student gave an interview to the same newspaper where she expressed her disappointment. “The concierge took me from behind without saying anything. He groped my ass and then he lifted me up enough to hurt my private parts. This, at least to me, is no joke. That’s not how an old man jokes with a 17-year-old girl,” she said.
This judgment has sparked outrage in Italy since it was made public. The Lazio Students’ Association strongly protested through its president, Tullia Narciso: “We are outraged by the motivation of the judgment […] Once again, touching is not recognized as such, this time because of its duration. We want to feel safe everywhere, and especially at school, which should teach people to recognize and eliminate violence and discrimination,” she said.
On social networks, many high school and university students expressed their solidarity with the girl. In videos posted on Instagram or TikTok, they film themselves feeling their chests for 10 seconds, showing the prolonged nature of the act, far from being brief.
The girl, hopes that “the prosecutor [fera] appeal, because if he did not, I would experience it as a betrayal”. To date, the prosecution has not yet appealed the decision.
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