You realize that Italy has some very fucked up ideas when it comes to sexual abuse and rape, right?
In Italy, sexual assault only changed from a moral offence to a criminal offence in the 1990s and yet the prevailing notion is, apparently, that rape is not that serious an issue. So much so that in 2012 the Italian Supreme Court ruled against holding men accused of gang-rape on remand in prison,encouraging ‘alternatives’. Stereotypes endure. Rome’s whistling and cat-calling lotharios are as much a national institution as Mozzarella.
Some controversial points of note:
The Court of Cassation provoked international outrage in 1999 when it quashed the conviction of a previously convicted rapist, saying it would be impossible to forcibly remove a woman's tight jeans if she resisted.
This ruling was finally overturned in 2008:
However, in a separate appeal by a 37-year-old man convicted of sexually assaulting his partner's 16-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, the court has now ruled that "jeans cannot be compared to any type of chastity belt".
Italy's highest court ruled Friday that a man who raped the 14-year-old daughter of his girlfriend can seek to have his sentence reduced on mitigating circumstances that the girl was already sexually active, news reports said.
And let's not get started on their ex-president. Or let's.
The Italian Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old child taking into account their “amorous relationship”. The court ruled that in the absence of physical force and taking consensus into account the verdict couldn't stand.