Maria Franca Lupino, 57, former coordinator of the "Noli me tollere" center for the elderly in Sorso at the center of an investigation by the Public Prosecutor of Sassari for beatings, harassment and a suspicious death inside the structure rejects all the accusations: in all there are ten suspects.
In the guarantee interrogation, this morning in court in Sassari, the woman, defended by lawyers Gianmario Fois and Sergio Porcu, defined the charges of ill-treatment against guests, abandonment of an incapable person and abusive exercise of the profession as unfounded. Accusations made by prosecutor Ermanno Cattaneo, after an investigation by the Nas carabinieri, and which had led the investigating judge Sergio De Luca to seize the rest home, last August 19, and to leave Lupino herself from the former hotel degli Ulivi and of the social health worker Emanuela Gaspa, 49, accused only of ill-treatment.
Assisted by lawyers Dario Masala and Natalino Zarelli, Gaspa exercised the right not to answer. For the two, there was also a one-year ban on exercising professional and entrepreneurial activities in which contact with the elderly or non-self-sufficient people is expected. The environmental and telephone interceptions, and the investigations by the Nas specialists, had uncovered numerous episodes of insults, beatings and sedations forced upon the guests of the structure.
During the interrogation Maria Franca Lupino repeated that the center is in order and that no one has ever complained to her of any ill-treatment. As for the death of an elderly guest, according to the autopsy, suffocated by a food bolus, a death that led to the accusation of incapacitated abandonment, the former coordinator of the elderly center reports that she immediately intervened on behalf of the woman. In the meantime, the defense lawyers have reserved the right to present a request for revocation of the disqualification provision when they can attach the ASL report completed on the 'Noli me tollere' weeks before the seizure, and which would not have found any anomaly. The defense pool of the two suspects will shortly evaluate the appeal against the precautionary measure.
