Her psychological 'ordeal' began in November 2023. Since then and for six hearings, the last one today, the Italian-Norwegian student who accuses Ciro Grillo and three of his Genoese friends, Vittorio Lauria, Edoardo Capitta and Francesco Corsiglia, of having raped on the night between 16 and 17 July 2019 in the Porto Cervo villa of the Grillo family after an evening spent at the disco, she responded to a barrage of questions from the defense lawyers, ready to demonstrate that the sexual relationship was not extorted but consensual.
She, who returned to Milan 4 and a half years ago and had the courage to report the four to the police, continued straight down her path.
But the path has been somewhat bumpy.
She was 19 years old at the time of the events.
Today she, who is 23 years old, is a girl with a psychological fragility that she herself largely traces back to that night.
"I attempted suicide several times - she said on the most dramatic day in court, last November 7th - I ran on the tracks, towards the train. And then many episodes of self-harm. Even now I suffer from eating disorders".
Regarding the emotional state of the girl, the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, who is her tutor, presented a request to report to the president of the panel of judges of Tempio Pausania that the psychological situation of her client has worsened, given her extreme vulnerability.
Two evaluations are attached to the request: by the young woman's psychiatrist and psychologist, who reported the increase in the doses of psychotropic drugs they had developed for her.
The document also points out that the witness, in the four days in which she was heard in the courtroom (today there are six), answered approximately 1,400 questions, over a thousand if we exclude the repeated ones.
And it should be noted that so far (excluding yesterday and today), the duration of her testimony before the judges of the Tempio Court is equivalent to 22 hours of hearing, 17 net of breaks.
A protected hearing was thus decided for her, which in the last two hearings kept her away from the gaze of the lawyers thanks to a black cloth.
This was not enough to block those emotional crises that made her leave the courtroom several times: it happened yesterday when she refused to see the video, just a few seconds, of the night of the alleged rape.
And it happened today, during the cross-examination of Capitta's defender, Mariano Mameli, when the lawyer insisted on some details of that night, extrapolated from the video images projected in the courtroom yesterday.
The hearing was suspended for a few minutes.
"There were some emotionally strong moments and the offended person showed signs of this, but they were physiological moments - said the lawyer Mameli at the end of the hearing - However, there was no tension beyond tolerable or questions and interlocutions that went beyond the limits of normal research into what happened that evening."
Corsiglia's defender, Gennaro Velle, is along the same lines: "We are satisfied with how the entire cross-examination went overall and with the declarative contents that we were interested in emerging, with all that this entails in terms of reliability and credibility".
The hearing continued with questions from the prosecutor Gregorio Capasso, who asked the girl what her condition was and whether she had drunk that evening, and ended with the civil party, represented by the lawyer Dario Romano - Giulia Bongiorno absent - and the questions of the judging panel.
"As far as we are concerned, we have concluded. The climate has always been good in the courtroom, with fairness and respect", commented Capasso.
We return to the courtroom on March 7 and 8: on the witness stand the technical consultants of the civil parties, the student's sister, one of her Norwegian friends and the father of the other alleged victim.
In all likelihood the defendants will be heard in the hearings scheduled for the summer.
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