As part of a disciplinary proceedings (later archived) was subjected to a psychiatric visit to check if it was homosexual. The protagonist is a select officer of the penitentiary police who presented an appeal to the Piedmont Regional Administrative Court, obtaining compensation of 10 thousand euros for “moral damage”. The person who will have to pay the sum will be Ministry of Justice.
The alleged advances
The story dates back to 2022 and at the time the officer was on duty at the Vercelli prison. The disciplinary proceedings were triggered by the accusations of two inmates, which they reported having received of advances to sexual background. Hence the psychiatric checks ordered by the prison administration and aimed at «clarify his personality».
The sentence
In the sentence the judges highlight that “the conduct of the administration can be classified as illicit and the harbinger of compensable non-pecuniary damage”. The choice to subject the agent to a psychiatric test would have been «arbitrary and without valid legal, as well as technical-scientific, support, given that the administration unduly operated an overlap between the sexual orientation of the agent and the need to “clarify the personality”. illegitimate interference between alleged homosexuality and the existence of a personality disorder.”
When addressing the judges the officer complained of having been put «pilloried“, which during the disciplinary proceedings were addressed to him “ambiguous questions» on his sexual orientation and who was subsequently referred for «psychiatric investigations» to the hospital medical commission in Milan. The health workers found no elements from which to infer unfitness for service and the disciplinary complaints were dismissed.
Now the judges write that there is damage: «Non-pecuniary damage, in the form of moral suffering, as the employee’s suitability for the job was called into question. carrying out their duties due to what was presumed to be his sexual orientation, conveying the idea that homosexuality (attributed to the appellant) could be considered a personality disorder”. For the Court, what is relevant «is the conduct consisting in having attributed to the employee a state of health (in theory, a personality disorder) such as to make it necessary to psychiatric assessmentnotoriously characterized by a non-negligible degree of “invasiveness”, particularly in cases where this assessment concerns a strictly personal sphere such as that of sexual orientation”.
The officer in the appeal had also complained that he had been derided and marginalized from colleagues and to have experienced a “strong stressful situation”, so much so change place of work. But on this chapter the TAR did not recognize the right to compensation.
Tags: Policeman forced test homosexuality TAR recognizes moral damages ministry pay thousand euros
