A fee of 5 euros for every time his wife and daughters sat on the sofa at home. The furniture, this was the justification, was purchased by him and he dictated the conditions, as he apparently did on everything. Father, husband and master. He was for years, until the Ravenna court removed him from home. Against a 60-year-old resident of Sant’Agata sul Santerno, the years of marriage resulted in a trial for mistreatment in the family. And yesterday the judge for the preliminary hearing Andrea Galanti accepted the request of the defenders, the lawyers Federica Montanari and Brunella Baruzzi, to proceed with an abbreviated procedure, conditioned by the production of documents and hearing the accused.
On the other side, a civil party with the lawyer Francesco Manetti, is the man’s ex-partner. She realized she was under her husband’s thumb only after 20 years of oppression, thanks to a course with a psychotherapist. Before her, she considered humiliations, threats and abuses normal. She also accepted them by virtue of living in peace: just like when, to avoid her daughters arguing with their father because of the “tax” imposed on the sofa at home, she decided to buy another one for herself and the girls.
The accusations also include banal but indicative deprivations of the climate that reigned within the home: among these, the ban on eating the ice creams that he bought. Or the money deducted from the 1,400 euros made available for monthly expenses, if his wife does not wash and iron her shirts, forcing him to take them to the laundry. And when on one occasion she asked him to pick up her bathrobe that had been thrown to the floor, he allegedly replied: “I’m the one who got married.” Finally we move on to physical aggression and threats. Shoving, hands around the neck, a hit on the head with a saucepan and a constellation of other episodes that make living together a nightmare for which the accused will now have to answer.
