A 19-year-old boy raped a girl his own age and filmed the abuse with his cell phone. This is the disturbing accusation that led to the arrest of a young man with no criminal record, identified by the police of the Pontedera police station, in the Pisa area, the place where exactly a month ago the violence allegedly took place. The attacker had met the victim that same evening outside a nightclub: he is now in prison for sexual violence and very serious injuries.
THE ALARM
The alarm was raised on June 1, when a 19-year-old woman showed up at the emergency room of the Felice Lotti hospital in an evident state of confusion: she was found to have serious injuries to her genitals, a circumstance that triggered the “Red Code” procedure. Once admitted, the young woman was interviewed by the staff of the Pontedera Police Station, to whom she told the details of the attack. For many hours it was difficult for her to process what had happened: she seemed understandably disoriented and scared. But the details she reconstructed were then decisive in identifying the suspect and realizing his actual responsibilities.
The 19-year-old tells the officers that on the evening of May 31st she was in a nightclub in the industrial area of the town. The music, the friends, a few drinks in company and that boy she had apparently never seen before, with whom she began to build a conversation. He, “an Italian who seemed to know the place well”, seemed nice and interested in her. By mutual agreement the two decided to continue the conversation outside the club: it was windy, it wasn’t really hot, but the night dragged the conversation to more intimate tones. Together they moved away to an area far from the parking lot, “near an area of vegetation”, certainly far from the gaze of the club’s patrons. There seemed to be an understanding between the two, who however evidently did not have the same intentions for the rest of the evening. Always according to the victim’s story, after a first kiss, the young man began a more aggressive approach. The “no” was loud and clear, in addition to the body language that rejected that type of approach. Despite the girl’s repeated attempts to reject him and despite her declared desire not to have sexual intercourse, – according to the testimony collected – the boy continued with the violence. And here comes the part that, if confirmed, would add to the drama a dose of shocking lack of empathy and sense of reality: the young woman says that during the violence the boy films the different phases of the sexual intercourse with his cell phone.
THE PROGNOSIS
The assault and the approach against the young woman’s will caused the victim to lose significant blood: the nineteen-year-old remained hospitalized for several days, with a prognosis of between 20 and 40 days. It was she who provided investigators, in the following days, with a physical description of the boy. Shortly after, she also indicated the nickname used by the alleged attacker on Instagram, perhaps the result of the memory of a search carried out during the evening in which they met. Thanks to this information, explains the Police Headquarters, it was possible to identify the alleged rapist: a nineteen-year-old with no criminal record.
After a day of searching, the young man was tracked down on June 14 right in the center of the town: the investigators seized his cell phone – it is not clear whether there are traces of the video he allegedly shot – and arrested him in execution of a precautionary custody order issued by the investigating judge of the Court of Pisa, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office. The boy was taken to the office, subjected to photo-dactyloscopic examinations and charged with the crimes of sexual violence and very serious injuries. Subsequently, he was transferred to the Pisa District Prison. The mayor of Pontedera Matteo Franconi also spoke bitterly about the matter: “We still have a long way to go to overcome the petty undercurrents of a patriarchal and medieval culture. Every act of violence is always unbearable, that against women is disgusting, that committed and filmed with a smartphone by teenagers is always a collective defeat for an entire society.”
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© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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