A young stalking victim was
found stabbed to death in Sicily Wednesday even as Interior
Minister Angelino Alfano hailed the results of a recent law on
murders of women or 'femicides'.
Also Wednesday, a report said underage crime victims in
Italy rose 61.8% in 10 years, and 60% of them are girls.
A 20-year-old woman was found dead in her car with several
stab wounds on Wednesday in the town of Nicolosi, in the
Sicilian province of Catania.
The woman, Giordana Di Stefano, two years ago reported
being the victim of stalking by her former boyfriend, Antonio
Luca Priolo, 24, with whom she had a daughter four years ago.
Di Stefano and Priolo - who was arrested in Milan on a
murder warrant while trying to take a train out of Italy later
Wednesday - had filed suits for custody of the four-year-old
girl.
Investigators, who tracked Priolo's drive up Italy in his
mother's Punto, are seeking to establish if there is a link
between the stalking episodes and the murder.
Di Stefano, a dancer, presented a complaint on October 3,
2013, saying she was being followed and receiving harassing
messages.
She filed no more complaints and did not nominate a lawyer
to represent her.
But Catania prosecutors continued the case, Priolo was
indicted and the first hearing of the trial was due to have
taken place on Wednesday.
The hearing was postponed as Priolo had requested
an alternative trial procedure.
Italy has seen "excellent results" from the law passed last
year on murderous violence against women or so-called
'femicide', Alfano said on Wednesday.
"We have had excellent results from the femicide law: both
murders and injuries have fallen in a highly significant way,"
Alfano told a conference on stalking at the higher police school
and a new TV series, Stalker, coming out on Premium Crime at the
end of the month.
"Prevention has worked, with police chiefs warning
offenders and sending them away," he said.
Femicide crimes were down 6.33% in the first half of 2015,
according to interior ministry data, while "persecutory acts"
such as stalking were down 21.3%.
"Stalking," Alfano said, "is a crime to be punished but we
must also prevent and protect: those are the three pillars of
our strategy".
The minister recalled that the government guarantees
protection and anonymity for those help report stalkers, "both
in the investigative phase and at all times during the
subsequent trial".
He stressed: "this is not a matter of anonymous complaints,
but of protected ones".
Alfano concluded by telling his audience, "with the law we
have done a good job but like always it is perfectible and I
can't rule out other measures.
"I think parliament can still do a lot more".
Underage crime victims in Italy rose 61.8% in 10 years, and
60% of them are girls, Terre des Hommes child relief NGO said in
a report based on law enforcement figures Wednesday.
There were 5,356 such victims reported in 2014. Of these,
962 were sex crime victims, 85% of them girls. Another 1,479
children and teens were victims of domestic violence.
From 2004-2014, the child murder rate rose 25.9% (from 27
to 34 children or teens killed), corporal punishment jumped
124%, and domestic abuse increased by 96.9%.
In the same period, child porn victims rose 569.4% (from 13
in 2004 to 70 last year), and by 24% in 2015. Of these, almost
80% were girls.
Reported cases of "sex acts with a minor" rose 20.3%, while
aggravated sex crimes involving minors and the offence of
"corrupting a minor" both jumped 41.6%.
Documented cases of underage prostitution fell 18% in the
same decade, perhaps due to increased skills in avoiding
detection, according to the report.
Sex offenders who target minors prefer girls, who make up
78-85% of their victims.
The report cites the latest data from Istat national
statistics bureau, showing that 6.8 million adult women in Italy
- or 31.5% of women aged 16-70 - have been the victims of
physical or sexual violence at least once in their lives.
Of these, 58.5% had also fallen prey to sexual predators
before the age of 16.
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