Jade, raped by the priest, considered consenting at 14 years and one day

She was raped by the priest for a long time, from when he was thirteen, until he was seventeen. But Giada Vitale, now 26, feels she has been betrayed twice: not only by the priest, but also by the institutions, which have not been able to protect her as they should have.

He tells us after that, in recent days, Senator Fabrizio Ortis presented a parliamentary question and held the second conference in the Senate (with the intervention of the journalist Eleonora Daniele) on his story.

Don Marino Genova, former parish priest of the church of Portocannone, province of Campobasso, was then 55 years old in 2009. Has been definitively sentenced to 4 years and 10 months of imprisonment. But only for the abuses committed before Giada turned 14. Because, according to the judges, what happened next was a “consenting” relationship. The proceeding concerning the events that occurred after the girl’s 14th birthday was closed, and the Larino Prosecutor’s Office rejected the request for the reopening of the investigation.

What do you expect from this parliamentary question?
“An answer. I hope that the Superior Council of the Judiciary and the Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia, want to take measures against those who have handled my case in an unacceptable way for the rule of law ”.

Explain to us.
“From a legal point of view, it makes no sense how this situation was handled. The first prosecutor to have dealt with the case, during the preliminary investigation decided to divide the file into two parts: what happened before and what happened after my 14th birthday, and he obviously did it to ease the position of the priest. Which, in fact, was sentenced in the Supreme Court only for the events that occurred before I was 14 years old. Among other things, the prosecutor immediately decided to investigate the priest for sexual acts with a minor and not for sexual violence. It did so without having any evidence available. Everything was decided from the start. And, unfortunately, even those who came after him have kept the same line ».

What was asked in the parliamentary question?
“Senator Ortis asked that the ministerial inspectors be sent to the Larino court for a check on the work of these people.”

Were you able to give yourself an explanation?
“There has probably been pressure from the start. The management of my affair finds no legal explanation. It is a vomiting situation: there are no other cases that have been treated in this way ».

From the moment she turned 14, she was considered consenting.
“Yes, I magically became consenting from the minute I turned 14, even if I wasn’t consenting until the day before. I have not even been subjected to an expert opinion to understand if when I was raped by the priest I was in a state of subjection, while in the case of sexual abuse of children it is a good idea to have a technical consultation to evaluate it. What then, it would be enough to consider the fact that I was 13 and the priest 55 ».

Even the Supreme Court had highlighted it.
“The Supreme Court, in the reasons for the sentence, stressed that even the events that took place after my 14 years would have deserved a trial and expert investigation, and should have been subject to re-evaluation by the Larino Public Prosecutor’s Office. Who, however, did not want to take into account his indications ».