The case is sensational and elicits a harsh reaction from the Government, with the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio sending inspectors and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni returning to attack the rulings of the magistrates which in her opinion hinder security: a 42-year-old originally from Bangladesh abuses a 13-year-old in his minimarket in Madonna di Campagna, the extreme northern outskirts of Turin, is arrested and then released from prison by the investigating judge after just two nights in prison because "he proved to be cooperative".
The day after the barrage of criticism, however, comes the reply from the National Magistrates Association, which through its president Giuseppe Tango strongly condemns the "several uncoordinated attacks by authoritative representatives of the Government, who have gone beyond criticism" of the ordinance. And he brands the sending of inspectors as "unorthodox".
The abuses filmed by internal cameras
The news, revealed on the morning of September 1st in the press, is making the rounds on social media, arousing widespread anger and bewilderment. Also because the violence - reported by the 13-year-old who immediately called her mother and waited on the sidewalk for a friend to arrive - was caught on camera, which even recorded another abuse, against an adult woman, committed by the man just 40 minutes earlier.
According to the investigating judge, the man "showed remorse"
Yet, after just two nights in a cell in the Lorusso and Cutugno prison and against the opinion of the public prosecutor, the arrest was not validated and the shopkeeper was freed again. Order of the investigating magistrate, according to which the man "showed regret", he himself handed over the footage from the cameras inside the shop to the officers and during the validation hearing he said he was "sorry", despite making use of the right not to respond. Furthermore, for the judge, the "trauma of arrest" could represent a sufficient deterrent.
The protests
The wave of indignation is transversal: women are protesting, first of all, for the blatant (and unfortunately frequent) underestimation of violence and the risk of repeating the crime by the judge. A demonstration is staged in front of the Turin police station with the cry of "let's close the pedomarket" promoted by the representatives of Fdi, led by the deputy group leader in the Chamber, Augusta Montaruli, and by the vice president of the Piedmont Region, Maurizio Marrone, who denounce as "unacceptable" the fact that the man can go back to work as if nothing had happened. The PD parliamentarians in the Feminicide commission speak of a "very serious case". The M5S promises a question.
Nordio's move
Nordio chooses to send inspectors to the Turin court to carry out checks, receiving the applause of the Northern League deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini who takes advantage of the opportunity to relaunch the chemical castration proposal. «I note that the investigating judge's decision falls within the scope of the autonomy and independence of the judiciary, which I cannot and must not interfere with», clarifies Nordio. «Nevertheless, taking into account the exceptional nature of the case and the social alarm caused, I have ordered the dispatch of inspectors to acquire any useful assessment». The other deputy prime minister, the Italian Antonio Tajani, speaks of "offense to all Italian women".
Meloni: sentence «breaks virtuous chain»
But it is Meloni who gives voice to the bitterness with a long post on Facebook. «The judge's motivation is: he had a clean criminal record, he was cooperative, he said he was sorry. Sorry", explains the prime minister. «We rightly talk a lot about safety. The Government is rightly asked to account for what is wrong. But here the question must be asked to the end. We wrote the laws, and they are stricter than ever. The police did their duty, in a few hours, very well. The Prosecutor's Office asked for the harshest measure. The whole chain worked. And then a provision arrives that breaks it in forty-eight hours, and we can't do anything except send the ministry inspectors, which is what we are doing."
«Forward on safety, but it's difficult like this»
Meloni returns to the regret that he had already expressed in the press conference at the beginning of the year, when he had blamed the magistrates who undo the work of Parliament and the police. «Who explains it to that family? Who explains it to that neighborhood, which knows that this man is there again tonight? We move forward. Rules, men, means, resources. All the way. But it's really difficult like this. My total solidarity with the girl and her family."
The defense of the robes
On 2 September the robes reacted with a note from President Tango, in which first of all the story was reconstructed («A magistrate – the deputy prosecutor of Turin – faced with a hateful sexual violence, i.e. the groping of a 13 year old girl, asked for prison for a man accused of having committed the crime. Another magistrate, the judge for preliminary investigations, instead ordered another precautionary measure, i.e. the obligation to sign»), underlining that the provision "obviously it can be criticized, but above all it can be contested according to the provisions of the procedural rules themselves, by appealing to the Court of Review and possibly to the Supreme Court".
Sending inspectors «unorthodox act»
In short, Tango continues, «it is not a definitive decision. It is not even a sentence, in addition to being neither a conviction nor an acquittal." Faced with this picture - this is the thrust - «there were several uncoordinated attacks by authoritative representatives of the Government, which went beyond criticism. And this is what we strongly condemn, just as we consider it completely unorthodox to send inspectors who do not have the task of evaluating the merit of individual proceedings"
