Protests broke out in Italy’s Ancona after reports surfaced that a court had set two men accused of rape free in 2017 because the alleged victim looked “too masculine”. The Supreme Court of Sassation scrapped the lower court’s verdict on March 8 and ordered a retrial, The Independent reported on Wednesday. The 2017 verdict was passed by an all-women bench of judges.
The woman’s lawyer, Cinzia Molinaro, said the judgment was “disgusting” to read, according to The Guardian. “The judges expressed various reasons for deciding to acquit them, but one was because the [defendants] said they did not even like her, because she was ugly. They also wrote that a photograph [of the woman] reflected this.”
Protesters from Rebel Network, the Italian womens’ rights group that organised the protest, tweeted: “Rape does not fulfill a desire for pleasure, but an abominable hatred and contempt for the victim. It does not depend on how feminine you are, but on the hatred inside the rapist.”
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