\n<\/p>\n
The European court of human rights has ordered the Italian state to pay compensation to a woman whose allegations of repeated rape by her partner were dismissed by a prosecutor as \u201cnormal\u201d for men who struggle to overcome resistance from \u201ctired\u201d women.<\/p>\n
The court ruled that the remarks perpetuated \u201csexist stereotypes\u201d and downplayed gender violence, resulting in the woman being subjected to further victimisation.<\/p>\n
The court also ruled that the prosecutor \u2013 and by extension the Italian justice system \u2013 had failed to provide a prompt, thorough and effective investigation as required in domestic abuse cases.<\/p>\n
The ruling did not cite the prosecutor\u2019s gender but Audrey Ubeda, the French citizen who made the allegations against her now ex-partner, has spoken of the \u201cshock\u201d at discovering it was a woman.<\/p>\n
The case dates back to April 2021, when Ubeda, who had been living with her Italian partner in the Avellino area of southern Italy, filed a complaint with police alleging he had physically and mentally abused her and their two children, including allegedly raping her several times and holding a knife to her throat \u2013 in front of two witnesses \u2013 and implying her case would end up in the newspapers like other femicides.<\/p>\n
Later that year, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation asked for it to be dismissed, referring to the knife incident as \u201ca bad joke\u201d and saying the physical violence inflicted on the children was merely disciplinary and did not exceed a parent\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said it was difficult to establish whether rape had occurred because the man might not have been aware of his partner\u2019s lack of consent, \u201cconsidering that it is normal for men to have to overcome a minimum level of resistance that every woman tends to display when she is tired from daily life and a man makes a sexual advance\u201d.<\/p>\n
The request was eventually denied and a new prosecutor assigned to the case. The accused man stood trial and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison by a court of first instance; he is currently free while he appeals against the verdict.<\/p>\n
The ECHR ordered the Italian state to pay roughly \u20ac60,000 (\u00a351,000) to Ubeda and her two children, who lived in a shelter for three years, ruling that authorities had violated the \u201cprohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment\u201d towards domestic violence victims, including failing to adopt adequate measures such as assigning a family home or authorising their request to move to France.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Italian press in recent days, Ubeda said the ruling was \u201ca vindication\u201d and \u201ca victory for all women\u201d.<\/p>\n
She told La Repubblica: \u201cWhen my lawyer explained that a magistrate had exonerated my ex by invoking the image of a man who must overcome a woman\u2019s resistance to have sex, I felt wounded all over again. I was shocked to then learn that those words had come from a female prosecutor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The European court of human rights has ordered the Italian state to pay compensation to a woman whose allegations of repeated rape by her partner were dismissed by a prosecutor as \u201cnormal\u201d for men who struggle to overcome resistance from \u201ctired\u201d women. The court ruled that the remarks perpetuated \u201csexist stereotypes\u201d and downplayed gender violence,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3361,22919,6883,4397,7379,7244,1657,358,668],"class_list":{"0":"post-50935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-allegations","9":"tag-compensate","10":"tag-dismissed","11":"tag-italy","12":"tag-normal","13":"tag-ordered","14":"tag-partner","15":"tag-rape","16":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}