Acquitted because "the fact does not constitute the crime": it was not rape, she was consenting even if she had been drinking . This is what was decided by the Court of Appeal of Bologna , which confirmed the full acquittal of two young people accused of gang rape by inducing with abuse the conditions of the victim, who was eighteen at the time.
They are a 34-year-old and a 35-year-old at the time a former footballer for Ravenna, who had filmed the scene. According to the prosecution, the girl had been raped and filmed in an apartment where in October 2017 she had been carried on a piggyback after an alcoholic evening in a club in Ravenna. But after the first-degree acquittal, which had raised several controversies with a procession organized by associations against gender violence, yesterday it was the turn of the acquittal also on appeal in Bologna . The two defendants aged 34 and 33, respectively a former footballer for Ravenna Calcio and a used car dealer, had to answer for gang rape : the first indicated as the one who had incited by filming the scene with his cell phone and the other as the one who had physically abused the girl, who was 18 at the time.
The Attorney General's Office had requested sentences of 4 years and 7 years (9 years each were requested in the first instance). At the time, two different GIPs, based on the girl's statements and especially the images , had applied precautionary custody in prison to both suspects . But the rape version was disavowed by subsequent judges who had followed one another in the case, starting with the Bologna Review Court which had released the two accused, who had always maintained that the girl had consented. The incident dates back to the night between 5 and 6 October eight years ago. After several glasses of wine and spirits in a club in the centre, the 18-year-old was accompanied to an apartment, where the relationship took place. The young woman, a few days later, went to report the crime with her boyfriend, although she only remembered fragments of the evening.
According to the first-instance judges' reasons for acquittal, just 15 minutes before "having the contested intercourse", the 18-year-old had managed to talk to friends and, on the phone, with her mother, also providing "appropriate answers to her questions". That is, "she had shown herself to be 'fully in her right mind, capable of validly expressing consent' which she 'expressed in particular with facial expressions and gestures'". Indeed, the videos "do not show any coercion or seductive, instigative or persuasive maneuver" by the 33-year-old, nor "inert passivity or unconsciousness on the part of the victim". As for filming showers and intercourse, although it was a "crude and deplorable" action, it had not facilitated "the contested violence". Of the opposite opinion, the prosecutor Angela Scorza had filed an appeal, speaking of a "horrifying scene" and "state of irrefutable unconsciousness" of a girl who was "completely defenseless" and at the mercy of the "denigrating behavior of those present".
(Online Union)
