He thought it was love, he ended up on trial: acquitted of sexual assault on a girl 44 years younger than him
A seventy-one-year-old man hoped to have a younger wife, but she claimed she had been raped and threatened: the judges did not believe her and cleared the elderly defendant.A courtroom (L'Unione Sarda)
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He thought it was love, but instead it turned into a trial. For multiple sexual assaults and threats with guns and knives against a woman 44 years his junior. These were the charges leveled against a 71-year-old man from Alghero, following the complaint filed in 2021 by a young woman, then 24. The woman had alleged that she had been subjected to sexual intercourse against her will from 2017 to 2019, intimidation, such as reporting her to the police station to revoke her residence permit, harassment, and obsessive surveillance. She even had a golden gun pointed at her, accompanied by death threats, as well as a "pattadesa" (a sexual assault) in two separate incidents: the culmination of a pattern of conduct that, according to the charges, continued from 2017 to 2021.
Today, however, in the court in Sassari, the panel presided over by Monia Adami, with Valentina Nuvoli and Stefania Mosca-Angelucci on her flanks, ordered the acquittal because the fact did not exist.
Prosecutor Maria Paola Asara had requested an acquittal with a doubtful plea at the end of a closing argument that revealed several unclear points about the case. There was only one accuser and one version, reported by the plaintiff's lawyer, Gavinuccia Arca, which focused on the contents of a report "which had become a tool of control and was asymmetrical," seeking €25,000 in damages.
Defense attorney Stefano Carboni has a completely different opinion: "The defendant has made dozens and dozens of absolute falsehoods." He claims there are 26, including denying being engaged to the defendant or having proposed to him. But above all, "it is false that the defendant raped her or abused her." In essence, the lawyer believes there is no proof of the charges, and the truth is different. "The accused believed in the possibility of having a young wife," he summarizes, noting, "He thought it was love, but instead it was a horse-drawn carriage."
A quote from Massimo Troisi's film, an expression that has become proverbial to mean disappointment in love.