Panel of judges decided a woman was too ‘masculine’ to be raped

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, triggered outrage over the weekend. Hundreds of people protested outside the appeals court in Ancona, the city of 100,000 on Italy’s Adriatic coast, where the alleged rape 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 her blood showed a high level of benzodiazepines, a type of tranquilizer, seemingly backing up her lawyer’s claim that her drinks had been spiked at a bar after an evening class.

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 that it was “not possible to exclude the possibility that it was” the alleged victim who organized the evening at which she says she was drugged and raped. The judges noted that one man “didn’t even like the girl.”