Reggio Emilia, 12 June 2024 – The trial with ordinary rite at the expense of Daniele Franciformer artistic director of ‘Etoile’ theater centeraccused of having committed sexual abuse towards nine students between 17 and 22 years old – three of whom were minors at the time – who took action as civil parties, while two others decided not to do so; today they are all adults.
Franci, 46 years old, now on the loose, he had been arrested in July 2022 by the carabinieri: according to the accusatory reconstruction of the public prosecutor Valentina Salvi, he would have exploited his influence as a guide for the Etoile, based in the ancient villa in via Fratelli Cervi, to gain the trust of the boys and then engage in sexual intercourse with them, facts dating back to 2016-2021.
In front of the panel of judges chaired by Giovanni Ghini, alongside Silvia Semprini and Luigi Tirone, Franci was present (as he always did also in the preliminary hearing), flanked by the defense lawyers Giulio Garuti and Gabriele Riatti. Prosecutor Denise Panoutsopoulos (replacing prosecutor Salvi) requested the admission of the evidence, as did the four civil party lawyers. Then the word went to the defender Garuti: he presented a list of witnesses which also included the alleged young victims, he filed a statement and a chat from a WhatsApp group created by the young people and asked for the transcription of the telephone and environmental interceptions.
The civil parties
At that point the civil party lawyers they rebelled. The lawyer Margherita La Francesca, who protects five young people, opposed the fact that the young people were heard again, as eight of them had already been heard in recent months during the evidentiary incident, a cross-examination hearing before the judge. And she also said no to the defense’s request to listen in the courtroom the mayor of Correggio at the time of the facts, that is Ilenia Malavasi (“I don’t know what she could have known about Franci’s relationships with the students”) and two teachers from the Galvani institute about Franci’s teaching methods. And you posed a risk of “secondary victimization”.
In the wake of the lawyer Maria Vittoria Marceddu, who assists the boy who first filed the complaint: “The defense wants to ask fifteen people about the psychophysical conditions of the boys at the time of the events, but they are collaborators of Franci and technicians who cannot report on this.” The lawyers Marco Scarpati, who assists two boys, and Massimo Tarquinio who represents one of them, also joined.
The defence
Lawyer Garuti began by saying that “we are faced with a case of alleged sexual assault by induction”. And he argued: “It is not true that the boys have already been heard on all the circumstances: there are completely new elements.” Then explaining: “They will report on the relationships with Franci and on a chat deposited in the preliminary hearing, but not during the evidentiary incident. And then on audio and video captures made following the evidentiary incident”. The same alleged victims had ended up at the center of an investigation by the Prosecutor’s Office to verify the authenticity of their statements through cameras and microphones both in court and on the car of one of them: according to the investigators, no they would have ‘plotted’ against Franci.
But the lawyer Garuti doesn’t think so, and this morning he insisted on hearing the children’s voices during the hearing: “That chat – he remarked – opens up a world on contagion declarative occurred between the young people both on the decision to present the complaint, and for other elements concerning very complex situations, in which the offended people spoke extensively among themselves. Then underlining that “it is difficult, and it is the theme of this trial, understand what these kids really experienced and what instead derives from a flu or contagion they have suffered”. And he said he had appointed Giuseppe Sartori, “a luminary”, as technical consultant.
From chat and wiretaps it emerges that the boys said: “We only understood when we went to a psychologist that we had suffered violence and we were not consenting”. Rejecting the risk of victimization secondary, the lawyer Garuti said that “from the chat it is clear that they are joking with each other”.
On the testimony of the former mayor Malavasi and the Galvani teachers, the defender objected not understanding the reason for the civil parties’ no: “The Municipality of Correggio was the financier of the school, there are interesting elements to help understand the type of teaching”. Then he spoke of “videos and other situations that demonstrate how the children, after the disputed facts, continued to have a very normal life: victims of these facts through and through, in my opinion they are not”. In the end judge Ghini decided to admit the declaratory evidence, reserving only the right to possibly interview the people already interviewed in the evidentiary incident following the transcription of the wiretaps, an activity for which the expert Vincenzo Ottaviano was appointed. It will continue in March 2025
