Is Italy Safe for Women: The Latest Case from Mantua

On July 16, a 55-year-old woman from Mantua (Mantova in Italian) was riding her bike home after attending a summer festival. Around 2 am, she was allegedly attacked by a 24-year-old Pakistani man and sexually assaulted. She was rescued by a private security patrol, and the man was arrested after fleeing and hiding in a bush.

The below article in Il Giornale by Francesca Galici points out that women in Italy do not feel safe at anytime day or night, and that Italy is suffering a plague of rapes at the hands of people “for whom the body of the woman is nothing more than an instrument at their service to satisfy their own appetites.”

And she is not referring to Italian men.

The below article is translated by Fousesquawk.

 https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/nazionale/lassalto-bicicletta-e-stupro-cos-pakistano-ha-aggredito-2349268.html

The assault on a bicycle and rape: This is how a Pakistani attacked a 55-year-old woman from Mantua.

The woman was returning home from a summer festival when the 24-year-old foreigner chased her, dragged her into a secluded area, and forced her to submit to non-consensual sexual acts.

Francesca Galici, 21 July 2024-13:53

Yet another sexual attack in Italy, a country already where women fear to go out at any time of day. let alone at night. The latest victim is a 55-year-old, who on July 16 around 2 o’clock in the morning, was returning home after an evening spent at the ritual summer festival of Campitello di Marcaria in Mantua province. According to police reconstruction, a 24-year-old Pakistani, now in custody, reportedly followed her and then chased her, blocking her along State Road 420.

The unidentified man reportedly immobilized her and then dragged her into a secluded place where nobody would be able to hear the cries of the woman. He then reportedly grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the ground where the woman was forced to undergo sexual acts. A private security police patrol realized that something was wrong, (and their) presence distracted the man who let her go. Only at that point, the victim managed to get loose and escape, finding aid with the two guards. It was they who immediately alerted emergency services, and Carabinieri cars and an ambulance rushed to the scene and transported the woman to the nearby hospital in Mantua, where she was treated. The doctors found injuries to the woman compatible with the violence she suffered.

The search by the Carabinieri did not last long because after fleeing, the Pakistani thought he had found a safe refuge in the middle of a bush at a nearby residence. It was there that the Carabinieri found him, then picked him up and took him to the (station). The 24-year-old, who is a resident of Ferrara, is now in custody in the jail on via Poma in Mantua after the judge of preliminary investigation validated the arrest, ordering him into preventive custody in jail. Fortunately, the woman, on the physical level, did not suffer serious physical consequences from the violence, but she is still in a state of shock after all she suffered.

A carefree summer evening, as spent for centuries in the Lower Po Valley, between village festivals and religious festivals, has suddenly been transformed into a nightmare. 

The plague of sexual attacks, which has already assumed the shape of a social emergency, risks radically changing the habits and traditions of our country. Women are troubled by the danger of being assaulted at any moment by subjects, for whom the body of the woman is nothing more than an instrument at their service to satisfy their own appetites.