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The court of Naples North acquitted the 73-year-old doctor-psychiatrist because “the fact does not exist” Luigi Carrizzone, former manager of the Mental Health Department of the Caserta Local Health Authority, from the accusation of having sexually taken advantage of a patient with mental problems during a visit to his private practice in Aversa. The episode emerged in 2018 during the wiretaps carried out by the Naples North Prosecutor’s Office as part of the investigation into the corruption system at the Department of Mental Health, which led to the arrest of Carrizzone and eleven other people in February 2021, for a total of around sixty suspects. The NAS carabinieri came across some conversations in which the alleged sexual abuse committed by Carrizzone during a psychiatric examination emerged, as well as the doctor’s pressure on the woman so that she would not reveal what had happened; this part of Carrizzone’s conduct was eliminated following an independent procedural path, which ended with full acquittal before the entirely female judging panel, chaired by Lucia Ferraro with magistrates Elvira Terranova and Alessandra Farina on the sidelines. The judges accepted the approach of the defendant’s defenders, Giovanni Cantelli and Raffaele Costanzo, who had supported the lack of criminally relevant conduct on the part of Carrizzone and of incriminating evidence (the prosecutor at the hearing was Cesare Sirignano). For Carrizzone and 58 other people, the preliminary hearing that will have to decide on the indictment requested by the Prosecutor’s Office in relation to the alleged illicit system at the Department of Mental Hygiene of the ASL. A system which, according to the prosecution, would be centered precisely on Luigi Carrizzone. Various crimes have been contested, ranging from criminal association aimed at corruption to auction rigging, forgery of public documents to fraud against a public body, from embezzlement to illicit trafficking of influence; the latter crime was charged to one of the accused, the president of the Campania Regional Council Gennaro Oliviero. Among the accused are the entrepreneur and owner of the EmmeDue health facilities Michele Schiavone, the former general director of the Caserta local health authority Mario De Biasio.
