Sentences halved for five former employees of the Alimuri Hotel in Meta, accused of raping an English tourist: the aggravating circumstance of drug administration was dropped on appeal.
According to the judges of the fifth criminal section of the Court of Appeal of Naples, the fifty-year-old from Kent, Mary, was gang raped but was not drugged, or at least there is no evidence that she was drugged. And that is why they confirmed the charges of gang rape, but did not consider it possible to confirm that the victim, at the time of the rape, was under the influence of narcotics. The reasons that led the judges to this decision and that even led to a reduction in sentence, will be known in 90 days.
Then came the sentence reductions for Gennaro Davide Gargiulo sentenced in the first instance to 9 years of imprisonment, he will have to serve four years and eight months. For Antonino Miniero, Fabio De Virgilio and Francesco Ciro D'Antonio the sentence on appeal was halved from eight to four years of imprisonment. Finally, for Raffaele Regio, sentenced in the first instance to four, he will now have to serve three.
In the reconstruction of the facts, a doubt that was certainly not secondary was raised, supported by the prosecution throughout the trial: Mary had said that she had incomplete memories of that night, symptoms that recalled a possible consumption of the so-called date rape drug (GHB), which amplifies its effects if taken together with massive doses of alcohol.
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This thesis was accepted by the first-instance judges, even though there was no scientific certainty of the presence of drugs unless, in part, it was found by the hair test which, however, does not give a certain date. In the second instance, however, the defense thesis was accepted and, therefore, the defendants were granted generic mitigating circumstances.
The defendants, although they were held equally responsible for the gang rape of Mary, who was on holiday in the Sorrento Peninsula with her 25-year-old daughter, could be released as early as next summer, having been detained since May 2018.
Article published on 26 February 2021 - 10:22
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