The ruling has been roundly mocked worldwide on social media
An Italian court has acquitted 66-year-old janitor Antonio Avola of groping a 17-year-old high school girl in a controversial decision that has been roundly mocked worldwide on social media, reported Reuters and The Guardian.
In the 6 July ruling, the judges decided that Avola’s contact with the girl lasted was brief enough that there were “ample doubts” on whether it was merely an accident.
Court documents indicated that the incident occurred in April 2022 at a high school in Rome’s Ostiense neighbourhood. According to The Guardian, the girl testified that she was ascending a staircase with a friend when she felt her trousers slipping off her waist – as she was pulling them back up, she felt a man’s hands on her buttocks. She was then grabbed by her underwear and lifted up for a few seconds.
After the incident, Avola asked the girl to drop the issue, saying “You will ruin my life, I didn't do anything to you”, as per Reuters.
The janitor was charged with sexual assault, The Guardian reported. At the trial, Avola admitted to the actions, but passed the matter off “as a joke”; judges said that the argument was “convincing”. Judges also accepted that Avola’s actions did not have “libidinous or lusty intent”, as per Reuters.
The court accepted the credibility of the girl’s testimony, but said in its decision that the “modalities” of the Avola’s contact left room for doubt with regard to the “voluntary nature of the violation of the girl’s sexual freedom…considering the very nature of touching the buttocks, for a certainly minimal time, given that the whole action is concentrated in a handful of seconds”. A judge also suggested 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”.
“I’m starting to think I was wrong to trust the institutions. This is not justice”, the girl said in a statement published by the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “This is not the way an old man jokes with a 17-year-old girl. At least that's what I think”,
Lawyer Andrea Buitoni, who is representing the teenager, confirmed to Fanpage that they would appeal the ruling.
The outcome of the trial blew up on social media after White Lotus actor Paolo Camilli posted a video to Instagram where he touched his chest while a timer counted down 10 seconds, saying, “if this is not harassment, what is?” Popular Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni followed with her own video, which reached her near-30 million Instagram fanbase.
In a TikTok post, influencer Francesco Cicconetti pointed out that the ruling reflected the normalisation of sexual assault and harassment in Italy, such that “a man in his 60s can grope an underage girl at school and walk away with impunity”.
Since then, thousands of social media users have also made posts decrying and mocking the Italian court’s decision.
