The hearing at the Vicenza Assize Court opened this morning, but was later adjourned. The defendants are Luigi Gianello and Martina Binotto, the two parents accused of intentional homicide by the Vicenza prosecutor's office for having delayed treatment for the cancer of their teenage son, who later died at the San Bortolo hospital .
The two initially turned to a doctor from Padua who was a follower of the so-called "Hamer method," a German physician who invented an "alternative therapy" for cancer treatment based on unproven "psychological conflicts." Thus, oncological treatments were suspended.
The hearing was adjourned until January after the Court upheld the defense's objection regarding an incorrect notification during the preliminary hearing against the mother. There will therefore be a new preliminary hearing before the preliminary hearing judge for the woman alone, to then consolidate her case with that of her husband.
The case dates back to 2024, after Francesco's death at the San Bortolo Hospital in Vicenza. A report had already been received by the municipal social services, but the teenager's condition was already critical. After discovering their 14-year-old son had an oncological condition—an osteosarcoma of the femur—the parents, having followed the standard treatment recommended by their doctors, turned to a doctor in Padua who followed the pseudo-Hamer therapy. The young man eventually deteriorated, however, and after several visits to various hospitals, including one in Perugia, he arrived in Vicenza, where he later died early last year. The Vicenza prosecutor's office, led by Public Prosecutor Paolo Fietta, had meanwhile already compiled a dossier on the case and launched an investigation.
" We never acted with the intention of harming our son. The pain and suffering endured by us and by his brother Filippo, who was deprived of his mother for 10 months, are unbearable." Luigi Gianello said this in an interview with Corriere della Sera. According to him, his son was "going through a situation he couldn't bear. ." In Bologna, however, "we didn't get the psychological help we needed."
