Parents of children who commit violent crimes face the threat of crushing financial penalties following a landmark ruling by a judge in Milan.
The mothers and fathers of five teenage boys who repeatedly raped a young girl have been ordered to pay her 450,000 euros (US$620,000) in compensation for failing to give their sons an “education in feelings and emotions.”
Judge Bianca La Monica awarded the damages against all the boys’ natural parents, including those who had separated from their partners and no longer had custody of their sons.
Many details of the case have not been disclosed because of laws regarding the identity of rape victims and minors, but the daily Corriere della Sera said that the girl was forced to have sex on a number of occasions between 2001 and 2003.
The girl was 12 at the start of the period and the boys were two or three years older. In assessing damages, the judge took into account the psychological damage to the victim and the fact that after the rapes she had left school early, thereby curbing her future earning prospects.
In a written judgment, the judge said the defendants came from seemingly normal families. Yet they appeared to have no understanding of the gravity of what they had done.
They had given evidence about the rapes in a way that was “aseptic,” she said. They had employed “words that were not expressive of emotions, using for the girl terms that made it clear there had been no consideration for her person.”
It was only when they had been pressed to think about the effect of their behavior on the girl that they had shown “glimmers of awareness.”
The judge said this showed the accused had not been brought up “in a context of respect for the feelings, wishes and bodies of others.” She said that, in their defense, the mothers and fathers of the boys had offered various examples of their supposedly good parenting.
They had told the court they made sure their sons came home by a certain time. They had testified that their children were brought up to be good Christians, and they provided evidence of having ensured the boys attended sex education classes at school. In some instances, the point had been made that a defendant had not shown any apparent interest in girls.
But none of this was as important as the fact that there was “no trace in the minors’ behavior of an upbringing that provided for entering into non-physical relationships with others,” the judge said.
On damages against parents no longer directly involved in the upbringing of their sons, she said law gave the non-custodial spouse not just the right, but the duty, to monitor the upbringing of a child.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS