Italy (Photo: Reuters)
Italy's prime minister's boyfriend has been heavily criticized for suggesting on live television that women can get away with rape if they don't get drunk, but has since claimed his comments were taken out of context.
Andrea Giambrono, a host on Rete 4 and the partner of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, addressed recent cases of gang rape in the country. In Sicily, seven men have been accused of gang-raping a teenage girl, while six young men are suspected of raping two young cousins in the Naples area.
Giambruno raised the issue last Monday when, during a conversation with a newspaper editor, they denounced the rapists as "wolves." "If you're going to dance, you have every right to get drunk," he told viewers. "But if you avoid getting drunk and losing consciousness, you might also avoid getting into specific problems because that's when you find the wolf."
His remarks provoked angry reactions. Lawmaker Martina Semento, a member of the center-right party who heads a parliamentary commission of inquiry into violence against women and the murder of women, said there was "nothing that can justify sexual violence and the victim should never be blamed, in any way."
Lawmaker Chiara Grybaudo, from the center-left bloc, accused him of "simple and pure victim-blaming" and added: "The main thing is not to tell men, the real culprits, not to rape."
Giambruno refuted the criticism, saying those who attacked him took his words out of context and used them in bad faith. "I never said men were free to rape drunk women," he explained. He said that before his remarks, he stressed that it was a "despicable act committed by animals."
Italy's prime minister, who is also the mother of their youngest daughter, declined to comment publicly on the storm, but said she would visit the town of Kyivno, near Naples, where the cousins were raped, during the day to show solidarity with residents who are also battling drug trafficking and Mafia-led organized crime.
The mother of one of the two cousins who were raped wrote to the prime minister through her lawyer that the family had been threatened and harassed by their neighbors. She said she did not feel safe and her son had been robbed since the rape. "Prime Minister, we are in your hands. Take us out of this hell," she wrote.
In addition to her, Maurizio Patriciello, a local priest fighting the Mafia, praised Meloni's decision to visit the town. He said he would ask her to provide an "army of elementary school teachers" for the town.
However, not all residents welcomed Meloni's visit, which received death threats from residents angry that the right-wing government plans to phase out income from minimum wage grants. The plan was promoted by the previous government, but Meloni says it allows thousands of Italians not to bother looking for work.
She said the threats would not stop her from joining Italians who want security and the promise of a better future for their children. "In the fight against organised crime, this government will not take any step back," she said.
Meanwhile, the 19-year-old girl who was attacked at an abandoned construction site in early July in Palermo, Sicily, was exposed on social media, saying she had left her home and moved to a sheltered community for victims of violence.
Her gang rape was documented by her attackers, and she said she was "fighting with my head, but I act like nothing happened - and I'm still smiling."
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