A landmark ruling in Milan resulted in the mothers and fathers of five teenage boys who repeatedly raped a young girl being ordered to pay the victim compensation of €450,000 due to their failure as parents to give their sons an ‘education in feelings and emotions’. The rapes took place over a two year period. The victim was a twelve-year-old girl, and her attackers were two or three years older.

Judge Bianca La Monica awarded the damages against all the boys’ natural parents, including those who had separated from their partners and no longer had custody of their sons. On damages against parents no longer directly involved in the upbringing of their sons, she said that the law gave the non-custodial spouse not just the right, but the duty, to monitor the upbringing of a child. The judge stated that the five boys appeared to have no understanding of the gravity of what they had done, and it was only when they had been pressed to think about the effect of their behaviour on the victim that they had shown ‘glimmers of awareness’.

The judge said this demonstrated that the accused had not been brought up ‘in a context of respect for the feelings, wishes and bodies of others’. In their defence, the boys’ parents had told the court that they had made sure their sons came home by a certain time. They testified that their children were brought up to be good Christians, and provided evidence of having ensured the boys attended sex education classes at school. In some instances, the point was been made that a boy involved had not shown any apparent interest in girls.
The judge said that none of these claim in defence proved otherwise the fact that there was ‘no trace in the minors’ behaviour of an upbringing that provided for entering into non-physical relationships with others.’