On board the scheduled buses in Taranto, the eight Amat drivers indicted by the GUP Rita Romano for aggravated sexual violence allegedly abused a girl with a mild psychic deficit. The alleged victim, now 22, was convinced in 2020 to report her abuse by her boyfriend. And in July 2021 the judge for preliminary investigations rejected the measure of house arrest requested by the prosecutor but imposed a ban on the accused from approaching the young woman. Later the company, wholly owned by the Municipality, suspended them from service. According to what emerged from the investigations, the drivers parked the buses in isolated places, blocked the doors and then abused the disabled girl. The trial against them will begin on 7 July next. The Amat has filed a civil action.
Yesterday, during the hearing in the Council Chamber, the alleged victim was heard in protected form for about three and a half hours and, without using the word “violence”, confirmed his version of events. The disputed episodes, which would have continued for a year and a half, between October 2018 and April 2020, were also documented with photos and videos that the authors exchanged in chat. According to her documents, the girl was a regular frequenter of the Amat bus lines, which she used to go from her grandparents’ home to her mother’s, but also just to spend time.
The violence allegedly took place on the buses that were parked under an overpass near the terminus at the merchant port or near one of the gatehouses of the former Ilva. Here, the judge reconstructs, the drivers closed the doors of the vehicle and took advantage of the “extreme vulnerability” of the girl whose mental discomfort was evident and “known”. The accused, aged between 40 and 62, are charged with the aggravating circumstances of having acted on a person subject to limitations of personal freedom (because the violence took place in buses with closed doors), and for having committed the act in quality of persons in charge of public service. In the intercepted phone calls, perhaps knowing of the ongoing investigations, a driver bursts into tears, another flaunts tranquility because he believes that the old videos have been deleted, another says he knows that three of his colleagues have abused the young woman. According to what emerged from the investigations, when she was 14 the girl had already been abused by a neighbor who was definitively convicted.
Source: Ansa
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