The former director of the mental health department, based in Aversa, Luigi Carizzone was acquitted of the charge of sexual violence because “the fact does not exist”. This was decided by the judges of the second collegial section of the court of Naples North, president Lucia Ferraro. The episode of the alleged abuse against a patient came to light as part of a corruption investigation, with patients suffering from psychiatric problems entrusted to private facilities in exchange for money or gifts, including Luis Vuitton and Mont Blanc bags. As part of that investigation it emerged that Carizzone had abused a woman, a psychiatric patient under his care, towards whom he had “particular attention”. A relationship that would have been consensual but which, for the Prosecutor’s Office, would still have constituted sexual violence due to the woman’s condition of “psychological impairment”. Yesterday the judges’ verdict. All the arguments of Carizzone’s defenders, the lawyers Raffaele Costanzo and Giovanni Cantelli, were accepted, with the doctor being fully acquitted.
