A honorary deputy prosecutorat the time of the events serving at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the court of Lecce, and a cardiologist on duty at the Benevento hospital, were subjected to house arrest by the Financial Police. Both are accused of the crime of gang sexual assaultaggravated for the doctor from Benevento who acted as a public official in the exercise of his functions with the active participation of the alleged accomplice, the deputy prosecutor.
THE the facts would have occurred in a hospital in the Benevento area during apparent medical visits. In those circumstances there would have been “strongly intrusive acts on the sexual freedom of the unsuspecting patients who were induced to undress and be groped by the doctor and the honorary deputy prosecutor – writes the Prosecutor’s Office in a note – who qualified as a colleague of the cardiologist”. Everything would have been captured on video by the two alleged perpetrators.
The investigations of the Benevento Prosecutor’s Office started from the transmission of the documents for competence by the Potenza Prosecutor’s Office, as during an investigative activity which concerned other facts, it emerged that the honorary deputy prosecutor in service in Lecce had gone to the Campania hospital and that during business trips he would have the habit of pretending to be a healthcare professional. On those occasions, together with the cardiologist, he allegedly carried out acts of sexual violence and groping against unaware women who were formally undergoing a medical examination.
After having received the initial news and having investigated it further thanks to computer interceptions, both by the Potenza Prosecutor’s Office and the Benevento Prosecutor’s Office, in June 2023 a precautionary measure was requested against the two for aggravated group sexual violence and for further conduct: abusive practice of the medical profession, illicit interference in private life and illicit dissemination of images and videos with sexually explicit content created by a public official serving in the hospital.
The request for a precautionary measure was initially rejected by the investigating judge of the Campania court but the public prosecutor appealed to the Naples Review. The appeal judgment concluded in February 2024 with the acceptance of the prosecutor’s appeal and with the application of the house arrest measure for both, limited to group sexual violence. For the remaining part, the public prosecutor’s appeal was rejected. An appeal to the Supreme Court by both the defense and the prosecution followed. On June 13, the Supreme Court declared the appeal of the defense of the suspects inadmissible and accepted that of the Prosecutor’s Office for the remaining charges. The point of the order of the court of Naples relating to the measure of house arrest has thus become enforceable.
Now it will be up to the Naples review court to rule again on the prosecutor’s appeal regarding the currently unaccepted requests. Furthermore, numerous local and house searches were ordered by the public prosecutor and carried out by the Fiamme Gialle of Lecce which led to the seizure of computers, tablets and smartphones of the two suspects as well as video cameras and digital recorders available to them and to other people. Finally, people informed about the facts and the offended people were heard with the acquisition of the related complaints/complaints.
