The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) believes that the Italian courts have violated the right of a woman victim of domestic violence not to be subjected to inhuman and degrading treatments and respect for private life and in fact Italy. For Strasbourg, Italy will have to compensate for the woman 15 thousand euros for moral damage and 10 thousand for procedural costs.
The reason? The Italian courts would not have supported his requests for protection and actually acquitted man, because his behaviors were not to be interpreted as “acts of systematic abuse but as manifestations of conflict and resentment”.
A ruling that, alas, little differs from the one with which a few weeks (link above) does the Court of Turin acquitted Lucia’s ex -husband reigns from the accusation of mistreatment and sentenced him for personal injuries to 1 year and 6 months, with conditional suspension.
What happened
It all began in 2018, when the woman denounced mistreatment by her partner (from whom she was separating but with whom she still shared the home) even in the presence of the son.
The man had been accused of threatening her several times, telling her that she would destroy her existence and that her son would take away. He would have given her continuous offenses, discrediting her as a mother and as a woman, as well as preventing her from access to certain rooms of the house. He often moved or hid his personal effects and even came to threaten to threaten to throw all his possessions into the street, including clothes.
The woman also denounced that she was forced to stay awake at night, that she had undergone intrusions in her private and work e -mail accounts and to have been monitored through cameras installed at home without her consent. Subsequently, the situation degenerated into a physical aggression: in the emergency room a trauma was diagnosed with the neck and shoulder, with an initial prognosis of five days of inability to work, then extended to another seven.
In his decision, the European Court of Human Rights underlined the inertia of Italian justice, criticizing both the attitude and the slowness of the civil and criminal courts involved. The internal judges had considered man’s behaviors not as systematic mistreatment, but as an expression of a conflict and a personal grudge, without adequately deepening the accusations of psychological and physical violence.
In addition, the court had questioned the credibility of the woman without adequate motivation, despite the same had produced a medical certificate issued immediately after the facts. According to the ECHR, in doing so, the authorities missed their duty to provide a response proportionate to the gravity of the complaints. Consequently, the state has not fully fulfilled to its obligation to guarantee effective protection against the violence suffered by the victim.
It is not the first time that Italy was condemned by the European institutions for malagiustizia on gender -based violence: in 2022, in fact, Italy was already condemned by the ECHR for the case of a woman victim of mistreatment that highlighted the different complaints ignored by the authorities, despite evidence and relationships.
no more laws are enough, women victims of violence cannot be left in limbo waiting for protection. Requests for protective measures must be evaluated in a timely manner. It is decisive.
