Sassari At first instance, the judge of the preliminary hearing Carmela Rita Serra he had believed in his innocence and had acquitted him of that terrible and infamous accusation: “Because the fact does not exist”, the preliminary hearing judge had ruled in November eight years ago. A few days ago the court of Cassation has partially modified and reduced the sentence from five years to four years and six months of imprisonment – overturned by the judges of the court of appeal (president Marina Capittaon the side Maria Grixoni And Gianni Delogu) – against a 58-year-old from Sassari for whom the ban from schools and public offices was also ordered and the payment of a provisional amount of ten thousand euros to the civil party who was represented by the lawyer Tania Decortes.
The accused, defended by lawyers Paola Milia And Mariano Mameliended up on trial in 2014 after the complaint presented by the parents of a fourteen-year-old and the public prosecutor Mario Leo, believing that the girl was reliable and that, therefore, the accusations were founded, had requested a sentence of five years and four months in prison at first instance. But the magistrate did not have the same opinion and acquitted the accused.
In the second degree trial, after the public prosecutor’s appeal, the judges had renewed the investigation to better understand what was behind that little girl’s story. The episodes of alleged violence that had been alleged against the accused date back to the years between 2012 and 2014. The girl, at a certain point, she had confided with her teacher, to whom she had told that the man – a family friend – had molested her. She had described the behavior that the 58-year-old would have towards her, in particular kissing, attempts to touch her private parts. The alarmed teacher immediately contacted the student’s parents to whom he told the confidences he had received from the girl.
A cold shower, considering that for them that man was a friend, one trusted person which had never aroused suspicion. But they still decided to believe their daughter and, after the complaint, the case landed in court with a very heavy charge – for the entrepreneur.
“I have never touched that little girl in my life,” the defendant said during the first degree trial. But before the judges of the appeal court the victim of abuse had confirmed her accusations even after years and the judges in this case believed her. «I was only fourteen when I was forced to suffer abuse from that man – the young woman reported in the courtroom – who my parents and I considered a family friend”. The girl from Sassari – now in her early twenties – had told the police and then in court a few years ago that she had been sexually harassed by an entrepreneur from Sassari who was a family friend.
In the second degree trial, the public prosecutor Mario Leo, applied for this proceeding to the court of appeal, was also present to support the accusation against the man, who had been acquitted in the first degree. Now the Court of Cassation, although reducing the sentence, confirmed the convictionbelieving the victim’s version.
