EDITORIAL – Italy’s courts misogynist, dangerous

In Italy, it seems, a person’s maturity is determined by his sexual experience. Once people… In Italy, it seems, a person’s maturity is determined by his sexual experience. Once people are no longer virgins, they clearly lose whatever protections come with being a minor.

What else could explain the decision of Italy’s Supreme Court to lighten the sentence of a man who, after sexually abusing his girlfriend’s teenage stepdaughter, argued that her sexually active status made her somehow less victimized?

The 40-year-old man originally tried to convince his girlfriend’s 14-year-old stepdaughter to have intercourse with him. She refused and was then forced to perform oral sex on him instead.

For this crime, the man was sentenced to three years and four months in jail, but he has been appealing the decision for the past four years and has not yet served a single day. His appeal is based on the argument that because his stepdaughter was a sexually active minor, she was therefore somehow more mature than other teens.

Italy’s Supreme Court thought this was logical. Her personality, their recent decision stated, “is much more developed than what would normally be expected of a girl of her age.”

The decision has been sent back to the lower courts for consideration, and so the ultimate status of the man’s sentence is still uncertain. Regardless of the final ruling, though, this case should be an outrage to anyone who believes in gender equality.

This girl’s sexual history has nothing to do with the crime committed against her. The man is no less guilty and his violation is no less atrocious because of her prior experiences – she did nothing wrong.

No matter how she lost her virginity, this girl was still only 14. The idea that she managed to make herself older in the eyes of the law by having sex is preposterous. Plenty of teens make questionable decisions and act “older” than they should; to an extent, this is part of being a teenager. Was this girl allowed to vote once she lost her virginity? Drive a car? Take out a loan? Of course not, because she was a minor. As such, she was deemed too immature to handle such responsibilities.

The court’s decision mitigates the seriousness of the man’s crime and suggests that it’s somehow more OK to molest some people than others. It’s never OK to sexually abuse anybody, and just because a young girl has lost her virginity does not make her the town whore, nor a lesser person who deserves to be taken advantage of.

Rulings like this will only increase the number of men who try to get away with abusing women. At a time when Italy’s women’s help lines are registering an increasing number of calls from women alleging sexual violence, a supreme court that makes decisions based on the sexual experience of the citizens it is supposed to protect sets a precedent that is not only stupid, but also dangerous.