The trial opened this morning in Palermo against
the six adults
accused of the gang rape of a girl, which took place in the Sicilian capital on the night of
July 7th
, in an abandoned construction site in the Foro Italico. The victim was not present at the preliminary hearing and is in a shelter outside Sicily, where she was taken after the attack she suffered on Easter Monday: representing her, in addition to the lawyer Carla Garofalo who defends her, also a dozen associations that will ask judge Cristina Lo Bue to be admitted as a civil party and that before entering the courtroom they started a sit-in in front of the court.
The trial takes place behind closed doors in the courtroom of the second section of the assize court. The defendants are Angelo Flores, Cristian Barone, Gabriele Di Trapani, Christian Maronia, Samuele La Grassa, Elio Arnao, all in prison and on video link for the hearing. Their lawyers should ask for summary judgment, which provides for a reduction of one third of the sentence.
The defenders handed over a file to the magistrates with two videos, one of which was shot in the Vucciria neighbourhood, which shows the victim while he pays for a drink and then invites the group of boys to watch some scenes on his mobile phone where he has sex with other people. In the other, however, the images of the cameras, placed along the route towards the Foro Italico, would highlight that she would have been at the head of the group and, despite crossing streets full of people, she would not have shown any sign of fear, nor would she have asked help.
For this reason the six claim that she agreed to seclude herself with them: a completely opposite version compared to that of the twenty-year-old who instead has always reiterated that the relationship was never consensual and that she had shouted "enough", asking her tormentors to stop. A young man who was a minor at the time of the rape has already been convicted of the gang rape. The juvenile court judge, Maria Pino, sentenced him to 8 years and 8 months.