DTwo Italians aged 25 and 26 have been convicted of rape in the United Kingdom, accused of raping a 23-year-old woman in London in the closet of a Soho nightclub in the early hours of 26 February 2017. Sentencing and sentencing are expected on XNUMX November.
The British media reported, identifying the boys as FO, from Naples, and LC from Bologna, students in International Law and Business Management, both described as being from “good families”. The two claim that it was consensual sex, but the Isleworth Court convicted them of rape.
According to the investigators' reconstruction, based on the analysis of CCTV images, immediately after the incident the two high-fived each other and one showed the other a video of the rape. The police added that the woman needed to undergo surgery following the attack.
Teatro, a club on Argyll Street in the heart of Soho. According to what emerged during the trial, the two Italians met the 23-year-old on the dance floor at around 2 am and started kissing her.
In the CCTV footage, the two men take turns kissing the woman, who is visibly drunk: only eight minutes after the encounter, according to the reconstruction, the two take her to a closet and rape her; six minutes later, they go out and leave the girl in the women's bathroom. It is at this point that the footage captured the two men walking up the stairs of the club, high-fiving each other and one of them shows the other the video.
The victim was discovered in the toilets an hour later by staff and was helped home. According to the reconstruction reported by the British media, the two young men managed to escape justice for over a year, since it appears that the Neapolitan returned to Italy a few hours after the events and the Bolognese a week later.
However, the Neapolitan, British media reported, was arrested at Heathrow when he returned to the UK in March 2018 for a football match and was charged with rape the following day; the Bolognese contacted the British police after his friend's arrest and planned to return to the UK, where he too was stopped and charged. The conviction was hailed as an act of justice by Rebecca Woodsford, a Scotland Yard detective in charge of the case, and as "the best epilogue for the victim of such a traumatic experience".
Article published on 17 October 2019 - 06:52
