Outrage in Italy at rape ruling

An Italian appeals court — a panel of three female jurists — acquitted two men of rape in 2017, in part because the judges agreed with the defendants’ argument that the victim looked like a man, and therefore they could not have been attracted to her.

Now that ruling has been overturned and a retrial has been ordered.

The reasoning behind the appeals court’s ruling, revealed through the Italian Supreme Court’s retrial order, has triggered outrage. There have been protests outside the appeals court in Ancona, the city of 100,000 where the rape allegedly occurred.

The case dates back to 2015, when a 22-year-old woman reported that she had been attacked. In 2016, the men were convicted — her injuries were, according to doctors, consistent with rape, and that her blood showed a high level of benzodiazepines, a type of tranquilliser, seemingly backing up her lawyer’s claim that her drinks had been spiked at a bar.

But in 2017 the appeals court in Ancona overturned the conviction, after the female judges agreed with the defendants’ argument that the victim looked “too masculine” after seeing a photo of her. The judges wrote it was “not possible to exclude the possibility” that the alleged victim organised the evening at which she says she was drugged and raped.

The judges noted that one man “didn’t even like the girl, to the point of having stored her number in his phone under the nickname Viking”.

The victim had returned to her native Peru. The victim’s lawyer called the judges’ reasoning “disgusting” and filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.