- Raffaele Meola was accused of sexually assaulting the girl in March 2018
A decide has sparked fury in Italy for clearing a person of groping an air hostess as a result of the 20 seconds it took her to react to the alleged assault was ‘too lengthy’.
Raffaele Meola, who was a commerce union official on the time, was accused of sexually assaulting the girl in March 2018.
The airline employee reportedly went to Mr Meola’s workplaces in Malpensa, northern Italy, to hunt assist with an industrial dispute.
The Milan Court docket of Enchantment acquitted Mr Meola of the alleged sexual violence after a earlier trial in 2022 additionally cleared him on comparable grounds – with the decision then suggesting that the girl’s response to the alleged assault was not fast sufficient.
Girls’s rights campaigners and the girl’s authorized group have slammed the end result as placing the clock again many years, and have vowed to battle it.
The airline employee reportedly went to Raffaele Meola’s workplaces to hunt assist with an industrial dispute
Her lawyer mentioned following the decision: ‘We’ll enchantment to the Supreme Court docket as a result of this sentence takes us again 30 years.
They added that it went in opposition to Supreme Court docket precedent which ‘for over ten years acknowledged {that a} sexual act, carried out in a sudden method with out ascertaining the girl’s consent, is against the law of sexual violence and have to be judged as such.’
The president of the judging panel, Nicoletta Guerrero, mentioned that ‘the sufferer was believed’ however that there had been inadequate proof to show the allegations.
Throughout the alleged assault, the earlier trial reportedly heard, Mr Meola was standing behind the girl when he put his arms on her.
He was mentioned to have touched, kissed and massaged her whereas the girl, for some thirty seconds, ‘continued to browse and skim the paperwork with out expressing dissent’.
The court docket heard that the girl’s ‘response time’ would have led Mr Meola to ‘misperceive his colleague’s will,’ il Fatto Quotidiano reported on the time.
The Milan Court docket of Enchantment acquitted Mr Meola of the alleged sexual violence after a earlier trial in 2022 additionally cleared him. Pictured: File picture reveals Milan Court docket of Justice
Lawyer Teresa Manente responded to the 2022 verdict saying it was ‘imbued with sexist prejudices, as soon as once more inserting the duty for the crime on the girl’.
Talking with Corriere Della Sera, the alleged sufferer responded to the earlier verdict: ‘Does not a girl have the proper to stay petrified and paralyzed within the face of harassment?’
Elisa Ercoli, president of ladies’s rights group Differenza donna, mentioned the newest verdict proves that Italy’s sexual assault legal guidelines ‘trigger severe and steady institutional violence’ and referred to as for an ‘pressing’ overhaul of them.
