The trial of the head doctor of the San Matteo Polyclinic accused of having… has begun in Pavia
molested eleven interns. Yesterday in court, seven out of eleven injured parties appeared as civil parties, including the only one who presented a formal complaint. Preliminary questions were addressed at the hearing
techniques relating to the charges, for which the investigating judge Maria Cristina Lapi will dissolve the reserve in July. The defendant’s examination is scheduled for November.
The investigations focused above all on the testimonies of young women (including a trained doctor), who told the Pavia police about the atmosphere in the department during teaching hours. The alleged harassment emerged from an anonymous questionnaire submitted to the trainees in 2021. The fourth and fifth year trainees reported “unseemly behaviour” carried out by the head doctor who, at the time of the facts, was director of the specialty school attended by a twenty students. Eleven of them spoke of annoying physical attention. Not only that, according to the testimonies of the students, during the teaching the doctor would have put into practice inappropriate attitudes and would have physically harassed them, simulating sexual acts or even groping them. As soon as the answers to the questionnaires arrived at the University, disciplinary proceedings were initiated and the doctor resigned from his position as director of the specialty school.
The head doctor, who has always rejected the accusations made against him (he must answer for sexual violence aggravated by the abuse of authority against eleven residents in his department):
according to the defense, the conduct would have occurred in front of all the students, therefore in a context in which one could not speak of sexual harassment. The doctor is assisted by the lawyer Maria Teresa Zampogna, a lawyer from Pavia who is part of the Milan Bar Association, considered among the major scholars at a national level of the crimes of the Red Code and is committed to combating gender violence. The reporting civil party is assisted by the lawyer Francesca Romana Garisto of Milan (consultant of the anti-violence center Cadmi), while the other civil parties are assisted by the lawyer Francesco Castelli and the lawyer Francesca Vaccina.
