Court of Cassation: “The delay in the victim’s reaction does not exclude sexual violence”

The “delay in the reaction” of the victim does not exclude sexual violence. With this reason, the Court of Cassation, in the sentence filed on June 16, 2025, accepted the appeal of the Prosecutor General of Milan against the acquittal of a former trade unionist, already attributed for sexual violence against a hostess. A pronunciation destined to leave its mark, because it states clearly that “The delay in the victim’s reaction in the manifestation of dissent is irrelevant For the purposes of configuring sexual violence “.

The decision overturns what was established by Court of Appeal of Milan in the second instance of judgment, who had acquitted the former trade unionist claiming that the woman “in 30 seconds” could oppose. The Milanese judges, in fact, had believed that the accused had not “used any form of violence – even if it was actually sudden harassment – such as to put the offended person in a situation of absolute impossibility of escaping the conduct”. A conduct that, the judges still wrote, “has (certainly not (certainly) frustrated any possible reaction of the offended part, having protracted for a temporal window”, “20-30 seconds”, which “would have also allowed her to be able to disappear”.

The story: the complaint and the acquittals

The facts date back to March 2018, when A Fit Cisl trade unionist on duty at Malpensa airport was reported by a hostess that he had turned to him for a working issue. The first degree, celebrated in 2022 before the Court of Busto Arsizio, had ended with an acquittal. Then, as mentioned by Printingthe president of the college Nicoletta Guerrero explained that the victim had been believed, but that “the test had not been reached on the hearing on what was reported by the hostess”.

The sentence was confirmed in June 2024 by the Milan Court of Appeal, with a motivation that aroused a large wave of criticisms. To indign, in particular, it was the idea that the woman would have had “20-30 seconds” to react and that this temporal period would have made violence “not configurable”.

A reading immediately rejected by Maria Teresa Manente, head of the legal office of the Association of Woman and Legal Difference Association of the Civil Party: “We will resort to the Court of Cassation because this sentence takes us back 30 years and denies all the jurisprudence of Cassation which for over ten years states that a sexual act, carried out suddenly, subtlely, suddenly without ascertaining the consent of the woman is a crime of sexual violence.”

Cassation: “Consent must be certain, full and continuous”

The appeal of the Prosecutor General of Milan, Angelo Renna, has leveraged the principle – now consolidated in the most recent jurisprudence – according to which It is not enough not to perceive a dissent: it is necessary to have the reasonable certainty of a full, initial and permanent consensus.

The Cassation has given reason to this interpretation, establishing that the time spent by the victim to manifest his dissent is not a useful element to exclude sexual violence. The “surprise” in the face of abuse, the judges write, “can be such as to overcome the contrary will”by placing the victim “in the impossibility of defending himself”.