An Italian former police officer who used couchsurfing.com, the host-a-traveler Web site, to allegedly lure young women to his home, where he drugged and assaulted them, was on Tuesday found guilty of raping a 16-year-old Australian and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison.
Dino Maglio, a former police officer in Padua, was convicted following a fast-track trial, but remains under investigation for three other alleged cases of drugging and assaulting women who stayed in his apartment.
The prosecutor in the case has not yet called for a trial in those cases.
The case raised questions about the safety of couchsurfing.com, which Maglio — who went by the name of Leonardo on his profile — is suspected of using to meet and host young female tourists.
According to witness statements collected by the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), which has investigated allegations against Maglio for a year, many women who say they were drugged and possibly assaulted by Maglio recall feeling comforted by the fact that he was a police officer when they decided to stay with him.
The women recall being toured around by Maglio, who showered them with praise, and then — in a series of eerily similar episodes — would offer them a special wine or tea. Some then recall passing out, but not much more.
After news broke about the allegations, couchsurfing.com said that users’ safety was a top priority and that it was constantly “evolving our tools and processes to find and halt abusers of our system.”
Maglio made a surprise final statement just hours before the guilty verdict, in which he claimed he was innocent and the sexual encounter was consensual, according to journalists at IRPI.
Maglio was ordered to pay 60,000 euros (US$63,622) to the victim in the case, who was a minor at the time of the rape. He was also ordered to pay her mother, who was traveling with the victim at the time, 15,000 euros.
Prosecutors said Maglio had admitted spiking the victim’s drink with a sedative and having intercourse with her. Asked why he had slipped a pill into a glass of Baileys liqueur, he told investigators before the trial: “I am stupid, there was no real reason.”
He also said he believed that the sex was consensual and that she “never said no.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not