She entered a tunnel from which she emerged, she says, “with great difficulty, and not even completely”. A sixty-two-year-old woman who lives in the Cagliari hinterland brought a man resident in Cagliari to trial, accusing him of sexual assault and attempted extortion. These are the two charges already formulated and which led to the opening of the trial. On June 11th the woman should have been heard by the new panel of first instance judges, given that there has been a replacement. But the new judicial round has been postponed and the date has yet to be communicated to the lawyer Angelo Schirru (who protects the caregiver) and to his colleague Gianluca Aste (the man’s defender). The story is very delicate, the documents speak for themselves, complete with interrogations and also the alleged victim: “I had met that man because I attended various concerts. He had touched me because he always spoke badly of his partner.” The meetings became increasingly frequent, despite the woman being married at the time. And, on at least one occasion, on a night in August 2015, the sexual violence reportedly took place: “I didn’t want to have any intercourse, but he forced me and I was only able to escape the next morning”, says the woman. The man continued to send her cell phone messages with threats, so much so that on one occasion the caregiver’s son had to intervene, inviting the man to no longer contact her mother.
The trial is now in its final stages. The woman will have to be heard again because in the meantime there has been a change in the triad of judges of the court. Lawyer Angelo Shirru, who defends the woman, prefers not to make statements at this stage. All the evidence, including some messages that the 62-year-old allegedly received from the man’s current partner, was handed over to court. Giovanni Aste is the lawyer defending the musician who, if convicted, risks well over ten years in prison. In the case of cumulative sentences, they would exceed twenty: We trust in justice and my client is sure to prove his total ignorance of the facts.” Today the woman lives many kilometers away from Cagliari: “I still carry within my body some signs of her blind violence.”
