Faenza (Ravenna), 7 June 2024 – He made up for it his victims probably with the hope that this would influence the size of the sentence. At the end of the indictment as part of an abbreviated trial, the district attorney’s office yesterday afternoon requested a five-year prison sentence for the over-sixty-year-old former sports manager from Faenza accused of having abused some young athletes thanks to his managerial role and also thanks to the gift strategy. None of the children involved in the affair took a civil action.
The man , who ended up in prison in Forlì in May last year and then under house arrest at the request of his lawyer Laerte Cenni and was finally allowed to go out two mornings a week to go to work, in detail he has to answer for continuous and aggravated sexual violence; and aggravated child prostitution (hence the jurisdiction of the Bolognese DDA) for a total of three children between 15 and 17 years old. For one of the minors, he is finally accused of sexual assault with the use of force. The ruling is expected mid-month.
The list of gifts drawn up by the police (Manfredo police station and Ravenna mobile squad) includes sports shoes worth hundreds of euros, an iPhone worth a thousand euros, home parties, meals, cigarettes, designer clothes, drugs and car rides. And during one of these, the man had also made the boy he had gone to pick up drive to the house to take him to school: that was the first time that the officers had stopped him – because he was speeding – finding the minor at the wheel .
The investigating judge Letizio Magliaro, who at the end of May 2023 had issued the restrictive measure at the request of the Bolognese prosecutor Elena Caruso, in the order had described the suspect’s action as a “sneaky activity of persuasion and pressure”. Moreover, according to what was reconstructed by the investigators, the man played on two different levels to establish a superior relationship with the kids: on the one hand he guaranteed them sums that they certainly couldn’t have access to; and on the other hand he asserted his presence as an adult who was also their sports manager.
The investigation it was triggered thanks to a report made to the police station by the educators of a youth center who had noticed that in mid-July 2022 that man had behaved in their opinion to be improper in the swimming pool towards a couple of kids. But some parents had identified the man as early as 2022: so much so the complaints had previously led to his removal and finally to his resignation from the sports club in which he had until then held a leading role.
Not by chance among the kids interviewed on record, there were those who said that he “used to stay in the changing rooms with the excuse of handing out sweets”: but his goal was “to witness the moment when the athletes took a shower”. At first he “didn’t seem like a person who wanted to hurt us.” On the contrary, “he paid for things for everyone like pizzas, pasta, popcorn”.
But the reality soon turned out to be very different: he would even go so far as to ask a minor to intercede for him with a friend for a relationship, because then “I’ll buy it for you”, in relation to an application for the Playstation. He had also advised himself “not to leave any trace of a text message” in the chats. However, he had missed something: “Call (…) and get 3 books”. A cryptic language which according to investigators referred to marijuana and hashish: always and only in exchange for sex.
