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.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the