The Court of Cassation has put an end to the case of Lino Bottaro and Rita Benini, accused of manslaughter for refusing to allow their 17-year-old daughter Eleonora, suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, to undergo chemotherapy.
The Paduan couple, assisted by the lawyer Raffaella Giacomin, had their two-year sentence imposed in both first and second instance confirmed because they were held responsible for the death of the girl who, according to the doctors, would have had a chance of recovery around the 80%.
By choice of the family, however, the young woman was treated, on the basis of the Hamer method, only with cycles of cortisone, acupuncture and vitamin C.
It all starts in December 2015 when Eleonora feels bad returning from school.
In the previous days she had been suffering from fever and bone pain.
You go to the general practitioner in Bagnoli di Sopra for a visit.
Only on 10 February 2016, therefore a month late from the onset of the disease, did she undergo clinical tests.
After a few hours she was diagnosed with leukemia and for this reason she was admitted to the pediatric oncology department of the Padua hospital.
But she Eleonora refuses chemotherapy, a choice shared by her family, followers of Hamer's theories of treatment, the German method disbarred from the professional register for having developed what she called the New Germanic medicine.
On February 26, the girl leaves the hospital, the very day on which the Juvenile Court suspends parental authority for the Bottaros, ordering the couple to subject their daughter to chemotherapy in a health facility of their choice.
Eleonora's ordeal, therefore, has a further stage in the hospital of Bellinzona, Switzerland, but even here, faced with the solicitation of resorting to traditional treatments, her parents oppose yet another refusal.
On 31 July Eleonora returned to Italy and was hospitalized in the hospital of Schiavonia, in the Padua area.
Without pain therapy and with the only support of vitamins, she died on August 29 of the same year.
In the three levels of judgement, the hypothesis was confirmed that Eleonora was strongly influenced by her parents to entrust herself to the Hamer method and therefore led to her death without the help of a recognized medical therapy.
The assistant prosecutor Valeria Sanzari, the first to investigate the Bottaros, the girl would never have had the opportunity to build her own freedom of choice of treatments, always overprotected and plagiarized by her parents.
Moreover, no word of repentance ever came from them: "I believe in divine justice, I have done nothing wrong - repeated mother Rita - I would do everything I did again".