There is outrage in Italy after a man was cleared of assault because a grope only lasted seconds. The judge trying the case ruled the 10-second grope was too quick to be considered a crime.
Italians are protesting after a judge cleared a school caretaker of sexually assaulting a teenage girl because the grope lasted only “a handful of seconds”.
The student from Rome, reported being groped by the caretaker as she walked up the stairs in April 2022. The 17-year-old said her trousers had slipped below her waist and as she was pulling them up she felt hands touching her buttocks. The man then grabbed her underwear, lifting her up a couple of centimetres.
When she turned to confront the perpetrator, he brushed it off, saying: “Love, you know I was joking.”
The caretaker, Antonio Avola, aged 66, was put on trial with charges of sexual assault. He would have faced a three year jail sentence if convicted. He had confessed to the grope, but said it was a joke.
The 10-second grope ruling
The judge ruled the grope lasted “between five and 10 seconds”. Therefore, it was too fleeting to be considered a crime.
The judge found the girl’s account credible but the “modalities” of the gesture left “margins of doubt” on the “voluntary nature of the violation of the girl’s sexual freedom”.
The judge added: “Furthermore, it seems likely that the brushing of the buttocks was caused by an awkward manoeuvre of the defendant which, due to the dynamics of the action, was carried out while the subject was in motion.”
The victim of the assault was understandably upset by the ruling. “The judges ruled that he was joking? Well, it was no joke to me,” the student told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“The caretaker came up from behind without saying anything. He put his hands down my trousers and inside my underwear.
“He groped my bottom. Then, he pulled me up – hurting my private parts. For me, this is not a joke. This is not how an old man should ‘joke’ with a teenager.”
“That handful of seconds was more than enough for the caretaker to make me feel his hands on me.”
Outraged Italians resort to social media
Italians have headed to social media to express their outrage. Some have posted videos of themselves touching intimate body parts alongside the hashtags “palpata breve” (brief grope) and #10secondi (10 seconds).
White Lotus actor Paolo Camilli started the trend, which was also picked up by Italy’s top influencer Chiara Ferragni.
Luisa Rizzitelli is a coordinator in Italy for One Billion Rising, the global network fighting to end violence against women. She said: “The interpretation by the court of what was a sexual assault is completely mistaken and extremely damaging. The fact that it was a joke and only lasted five or 10 seconds doesn’t matter – it was sexual harassment and should be treated in that way.”
This is not the first time Italian judges have been criticised for their rulings concerning sexual assault on women. In 2017, a judge in Turin tossed a case out as he said the woman’s reaction was too weak to justify a sexual assault charge, ANSA reported. The woman only said, “Stop it” and “Enough” without crying out or calling for help.
In the same year, three judges in Ancona cleared two men of rape partly because he said the victim looked too masculine to be a target of attraction. That decision was eventually overturned two years later by the Supreme Court.
