How many women have been subjected to sexual assaults without feeling embarrassment, confusion, fear? What would be, according to the courts, the right times to react? The reactions that can be put in place when facing a sexual assault are flight, attack or paralysis, or a sort of block that prevents any ability to react. Thirty seconds are enough before you exclaim: “I’m pissed off”, when the man you turned to for work, a paid trade unionist to advise on your rights, thinks he can get his hands on you, stealing an intimate contact that doesn’t do you want? If he had stolen a wallet, only the theft would have been assessed, not the reaction of the robbed.
But it was not the theft of a wallet and, according to the Court of Busto Arsizio, thirty seconds to react to groping is far too many. With these reasons, a CISL trade unionist was acquitted on trial for having committed sexual violence on a flight attendant. The events took place in Malpensa in March 2018. During the trial the woman was considered credible by the three magistrates Nicoletta Guerriero, president of the college, Giulia Pulcina and Veronica Giacoia, who however they did not believe there was a crime for “the absence of the objective element and the psychological coefficient required by the incriminating norm”. The judges wrote that the man’s conduct “did not involve any physical constraint of the victim, nor did it materialize in acts capable of overcoming the contrary will of the injured person for insidiousness and suddenness” because the flight attendant during the protracted aggression for thirty seconds “he continued leafing through and reading documents without expressing any dissent” and was “in conditions of being able to leave”Because the door was not locked.
DiRe, the network of anti-violence centers, judged the reasons for the acquittal inadmissible and commented on how we are “once again faced with organs of the judicial system that act following stereotypes and prejudices that make women feel responsible for not preventing the violence they suffer “. Judge Paola Di Nicola, to whom I addressed to comment on this sentence, observed that “the court of Busto Arsizio confirmed that sexual acts were carried out, that the victim was credible, that the validity of the accusations was ascertained by testimonies of other women who had suffered from the same man behaviors that were sweetened as “inappropriate sexual approaches in the workplace”, yet acquitted the defendant. The judges found that the victim’s lack of reaction created a kind of implicit consent. Thus, the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, now granite and peaceful for decades, has not been taken into account, which represents how sexual violence is consummated even if the victim does not explicitly oppose and remains in a state of passivity (see for example the sentence 3224 of 2021); constant jurisprudence in line with the Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe “.
But the Charter ratified by Italy on 19 June 2013 it is often forgotten in the civil and criminal courtrooms. At the expense of women who report violence, often encouraged to “break the silence”, under penalty of the stigma of “cowardice”, by institutional campaigns against violence against women. A choice that can become a cold shower if the violence is not a crime because it is consumed faster than the slow reaction of the victim. Yet, for years, the Court of Cassation has been oriented not to consider the reaction of the victims when it is necessary to ascertain the responsibility of the aggressors.
Judge Paola Di Nicola explains it: “The sentence is limited to a few statements without taking into account of the sentences of the Court of Cassation on sexual violence, in terms of dissent, consent and freedom of self-determination. Generally speaking, it should be emphasized that when the facts are decontextualized and victims are forced to react to sexual violence according to the abstract logic of the interpreter of a perfect victim of rape, and not a specific woman in a particular power relationship, a stereotype about rape applies devoid of connections with reality in fact and with the evidence acquired. This still happens due to the lack of adequate training on the part of all legal practitioners. The normal physiological reactions of victims of sexual assault continue to be ignored, such as the phenomenon of thanatosis which limits or excludes any ability to react, and in this way one ends up blaming the victims once again. by removing the responsibility of the perpetrators of violence”.
Teresa Manente, the lawyer who assisted the flight attendant and is working on the appeal request, also pointed the finger at the strategy of the defendant’s lawyers who throughout the trial they tried to discredit the victim like a hysterical and lying woman. The prosecutor had asked for a two-year sentence for the trade unionist, we’ll see if he appeals.