The Palermo prosecutor's office has requested a five-year prison sentence for a 50-year-old man accused of raping the 19-year-old victim, who was raped in July 2023 at the Foro Italico in Palermo. The trial, which is being held under an abbreviated procedure, sees a relative of the young woman accused, who allegedly committed the sexual abuse in June 2022 inside the pizzeria where she worked. According to the victim, the man made her snort cocaine. After that, he allegedly mistreated her. A version denied by the man, defended by lawyers Giovanni Morgante and Giovanni Di Trapani, who claims to have never had sexual relations with the girl.
The male version
The fifty-year-old allegedly said that it was his aunt who had asked him to let her work in his club to get her away from the dodgy circles she frequented. The man claimed that it was the young woman who, after drinking a beer, had tried to kiss him. He allegedly refused and took her back to Ballarò, to the house where she lived with her boyfriend. According to the accused, the girl had denounced him precisely to calm down her very jealous ex-partner.
The gang rape trial
On May 24, the trial opened before the Second Criminal Chamber of the Court of Palermo, in which six boys accused of raping the girl at the Foro Italico in Palermo. During the preliminary hearing, the defendants had requested to be admitted to the abbreviated trial, conditioning their request on a series of new activities, including the examination of the victim in the courtroom. A request rejected by the investigating judge Cristina Lo Bue, according to whom the girl had “already been heard on numerous occasions” and a new hearing would have resulted in nothing more than “secondary victimization”. The girl, now twenty years old, lives in northern Italy, after having spent some time in a protected community.
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