LIVORNO. He would have abused three little girls, his step-granddaughters, when they came to Livorno on holiday at their grandmother’s house. Forcing one of them, who was seven years old at the time, to “perform sexual acts”. For this reason, an 87-year-old pensioner who lives in the city was sentenced to six years in prison for sexual acts with a minor. The episodes allegedly occurred between 1998 and 2013. The victims, who found the courage to report it in 2019, are now 33, 27 and 26 years old, live abroad and each – according to the prosecution – would not have known of the involvement of the others. They learned about it, then found the strength together to sue him, when one of them met her cousin who confided in her about nightmares from the past.
The sentence
The elder – of which The Tyrrhenian Sea he omits the name and surname so as not to identify the women victims of the violence, assisted by the lawyer Elena Pellegrini – he was also sentenced to a provisional amount of 20 thousand euros for each of the victims (60 thousand in total), to the payment of court costs (1,664 euros, in addition to the reimbursement of general expenses, the lawyers’ social security fund and VAT) and, for him, the judge for preliminary investigations Antonio Del Forno has ordered perpetual disqualification from public offices and from any office relating to the protection and guardianship, the legal one during the sentence, the loss of the right to alimony, the exclusion from the succession of the offended persons, the perpetual disqualification from positions in schools and from any office or service in institutions or other public or private structures frequented mainly by minors. When the sentence, if confirmed in subsequent levels of judgement, is served – therefore when he is over ninety years of age – for two years he will also not be able to go near places frequented mainly by minors and carry out jobs that involve habitual contact with them. He will, however, be obliged to keep the police informed about his residence and movements. «The passage of time and the age of the convicted person – states the lawyer Pellegrini – do not give certainty of the punishment, which according to the Constitution the penal system must be able to implement. A crime punished after such a long time, even with an exemplary punishment, fails to do justice, given that it will only remain on paper and will not be able to allow the guilty to repent”. For one charge, again sexual acts with a minor, the eighty-seven year old was declared not to have to proceed due to the statute of limitations.
The witness
To the Tyrrhenian, the mother of one of the girls, said that «my daughter revealed for the first time about the abuse she suffered in 2019. She did so after meeting her cousin. I immediately believed her, I was in shock: this man, my mother’s husband, did these things while having the courage to look into her eyes. He even gave her money once. I never suspected anything, also because I never let my daughters sleep outside the house. And instead, right at home, everything happened. My niece then told me that one morning she found him in her room while he had his hand in her private parts. He asked her what he did with her, he apologized, saying that she had mistaken her for his grandmother.”
