This is just creepy. The Supreme Court of Italy has ruled that a man in his 40s who forced his 14-year-old stepdaughter to have oral sex with him should be able to reduce the three year, four month sentence he received, because the child had already had sex with other men. Here’s an article about it from SwissInfo.
The court said in its ruling Friday that the child’s “personality, from a sexual point of view, is much more developed than what would be normally expected of a girl of her age. It is therefore fair to argue that (the damage for the victim) would be lower if the abused girl was not a virgin.”
This is the same court (all male, by the way) that has ruled that “an isolated and impulsive” pat on a woman’s bottom at work did not constitute sexual harassment, and it returned a verdict that a woman could not have been raped because she was wearing skin-tight jeans.
The ruling has generated immediate and widespread condemnation. An advocate for abused women called the ruling “inconceivable” and said the court had set back the law by 50 years. The granddaughter of Benito Mussolini called it “shameful” and “devastating.”