ANSA

Filmed rapes pass limits of atrocity – privacy watchdog

Filmed rapes pass the limits of atrocity, Italy’s privacy watchdog Pasquale Stanzione said Monday. He said that “the offended women and girls are two-time victims, and greater contempt is added to the crime”.

Italy has seen several cases of youth gang rapes and rapists filming their actions lately – most recently a 59-year-old Roman waste collector who allegedly filmed three rapes near the Italian capital between September and January.

Stanzione, the Personal Data Protection Watchdog, said: “The bitter chronicle of these months has shown us how the barbarity of rapes, committed by boys, in groups, on girls, alone, can exceed all limits of atrocity by being filmed, shared and mocked, as if it were a fragment of an ordinary everyday life.

“To the violence acted on the body is added, with if possible even greater contempt, the represented violence, exhibited like a trophy, while those who suffer it become twice the ‘offended person’: it is the secondary victimisation whose effects are exponentially and dramatically amplified by the network”.