New preliminary hearing, absent Ciro Grillo and his friends

(from the correspondent Elvira Terranova) – The appointment is set for tomorrow morning at 12 at the Court of Tempio Pausania in front of the Gip Caterina Interlandi, but Ciro Grillo and his three friends, accused of group sexual violence against an Italian-Norwegian girl 19 years will not be there. Also this time Ciro Grillo, Edoardo Capitta, Francesco Corsiglia and Vittorio Lauria, have decided to stay in Genoa and be represented in the courtroom by their lawyers. On the other side of the desks there will be the lawyer Giulia Bongiorno who represents Silvia, the 21-year-old Italian-Norwegian student who reported the alleged gang rape that would have taken place in Beppe Grillo’s residence in Cala di Volpe, Costa Smeralda. That night, between 16 and 17 July 2019, she was with a friend, but she is not an eyewitness because that night she slept on the sofa. And she too is a victim of abuse because while she was sleeping the young people took pictures in obscene attitudes right on her face. A few days ago, also a medical-legal consultation was reported, from which the suspicion emerges that the Italian-Norwegian student had been forced to take Ghb, the so-called rape drug, a hypothesis put forward by the consultant, Professor Enrico Marinelli of the University La Sapienza, specialist in forensic medicine, requested and filed by the lawyer Bongiorno. “In a purely theoretical line writes Marinelli in the report of about twenty pages – it is not possible to exclude” that the alleged victim has taken “so-called rape drugs, before or in association with alcohol”. The professor defines them as “particularly insidious” since they are “made up of odorless and colorless liquids, easily mixable with common drinks, even non-alcoholic ones, without the victim being able to notice”. If for Ciro Grillo and his friends the relationship with the girl would have been “consenting”, the professor writes that “he cannot have expressed a valid consent to the group relationship”. Because alcohol “greatly diminished his decision-making ability and nullified his ability to self-determine”. The girl, as it seems, would have a memory lapse after waking up. “An amnesia without loss of consciousness and the ability to perform complex actions such as conversing, driving, having sex and even killing,” says the professor. Young people have always talked about “consenting” relationships The boys have always claimed that that night, between 16 and 17 July 2019, there would have been group sex “but always consenting”, as they reiterated in the minutes. The girl, on vacation in Costa Smeralda, who has always claimed to have been raped, is not of the same opinion. Many times. A complaint arrived a week after the alleged gang rape, on his return to Milan, where he lives with his parents. The accusations are heavy. The magistrates retraced all the stages of the story in the request for indictment for the four Genoese young people, starting with the young woman’s story. “Forced to have sex in the bedroom and bathroom cubicle”, “grabbed by the head drinking half a bottle of vodka”, and the girl’s family lawyers speculate that the rape drug was made to drink at that juncture , and “forced to have group relationships” by the four young men under investigation who “took advantage of her conditions of psychological and physical inferiority” of that moment. These are just some of the accusations of the Public Prosecutor of Tempio Pausania (Sassari) against the four boys of Genova bene. Pages upon pages of horrors told by the young Italian-Norwegian student SJ, just 19 years old, who she allegedly suffered on that July 17th. As stated in the papers of the Prosecutor “the residence was identified thanks to a selfie taken” by the young girl and “is attributable to Beppe Grillo”. The investigations were closed twice, a first time in November and a second time in early May, after the new interrogations of the young people. Ciro Grillo was listened to again but not by the Prosecutor, as had happened the first two times, but by the Carabinieri of Genoa, delegated by the magistrate. Spontaneous statements to give “further elements” in favor of the suspects. In May, the request for indictment. Tomorrow the Prosecutor will be alone, the prosecutor Bassani has been transferred to Sassari To demonstrate group violence, the Prosecutor, first represented by the Prosecutor Gregorio Capasso and the prosecutor Laura Bassani, and now only by the head of the Prosecutor after the transfer of the prosecutor to Sassari, have attached to the documents, the raw story of the young woman who explains that she was raped in turn. “At about six in the morning – reads a report – while RM (the victim’s friend ed) was asleep”, the magistrates write, the young woman was “forced” to have sexual intercourse in the bedroom and in the shower cubicle of the bathroom, with one of the boys. “The other three suspects attended without participating.” Then another violence, forcing the young woman to drink half a bottle of vodka against her will. The Prosecutor also has a series of photographs and images that he has included in the file. “The girl then lost consciousness until 15 when she returned to Palau”, the prosecutors write. The “lucidity” of the victim “was enormously compromised” when she was “taken to the marriage room where the suspects” would have forced her to have “five or six sexual relations”. Ciro Grillo, Edoardo Capitta, Francesco Corsiglia and Vittorio Lauria, who deny all allegations of sexual violence, in mid-July 2019, they were on vacation in Costa Smeralda, including dancing at the Billionaire and dinners with friends. But one night, on July 16, as the 19-year-old girl later recounted, they would be responsible for gang rape. At their expense there are also some photographs that the consultants of the Prosecutor have found on cell phones and some wiretapping. The girl was heard several times by the investigators and told, down to the smallest detail, what would happen that night. In over a year and a half of investigations, the magistrates also checked the phones not only of the boys but also of other people, including that of Parvin Tadjik, mother of Ciro Grillo and wife of the Genoese comedian. The woman, heard by the prosecutors, has always said that that evening she slept in the apartment next to the one in which the violence would take place, saying she did not notice anything. after more than a year from the facts, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, led by Gregorio Capasso, sent the first notification to the defenses, making the material available on file. The lawyers have asked for an extension for the defense pleadings because the material is “huge”. The prosecutor Capasso and the substitute Laura Bassani, have included in the file the images found in the telephones which, according to the prosecution, would show the abuses even to the detriment of the second girl, who was sleeping. In the first hearing, last July, the gup of Tempio Pausania Caterina Interlandi admitted the civil action of the two girls and withdrew to the council chamber to decide on some preliminary issues raised by the parties involved in the legal matter, then arranging the postponement to 5 November. On that occasion, lawyer Bongiorno produced a series of newspaper articles, video interviews and statements by her client – the 19-year-old Italian-Norwegian – but also by some witnesses. The defensive panel, in addition to contesting the genuineness and legitimacy of the documents produced and asking for a translation of that voice chat, pleaded some notification defects. The defendants are represented by the lawyers Enrico Grillo, Sandro Vaccaro, Gennaro Velle, Romano Raimondo, Ernesto Monteverde and Mariano Mameli. The two alleged victims by the lawyers Giulia Bongiorno and Vinicio Nardo. Now it will be a judge to decide whether Ciro Grillo and his three friends will have to go to trial.