Mayor of abuse-case town sues Di Maio

(ANSA) - Bologna, September 19 - The suspended mayor of a northern town at the centre of a child-abuse investigation has reportedly taken legal action against Foreign Minister and 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio as well as against several other people.
    Andrea Carletti, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), is under house arrest in relation to the probe into alleged malpractice by social workers in fostering cases in the town of Bibbiano in Emilia-Romagna.
    Social workers are alleged to have coached and coerced kids into saying their parents were abusing them so that they could be entrusted to 'friendly' families for a profit, according to investigators.
    The case has frequently been hit the headlines in recent months and sparked political rows. La Gazzetta di Reggio reported that Carletti has filed a complaint regarding 147 internet posts and emails considered offensive or of a threatening nature, including at least one by Di Maio.
    The M5S leader posted a message about the case on Facebook in July.
    "I don't want to have anything to do with the PD," it read.
    "With the party that is part of the Bibbiano scandal, with children taken away from their families and even subject to electric shocks and sent to other families, with a PD mayor involved". Since then the PD and the M5S have formed an alliance for a new government under Premier Giuseppe Conte after League leader Matteo Salvini pulled the plug on the first Conte executive last month.