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A janitor at a high school in Italy who groped a student was acquitted after judges found he hadn’t touched her long enough for the incident to be classified as sexual assault.
The teenage student testified that she walked up the stairs to class in April last year when she felt Someone put his hands in her pants and underwear and lifted her in the air. She turned and saw the janitor behind her and then walked away without a word, she said during the trial, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported.
She claimed the man followed her and said to her, “Honey, you know I was joking.” The physical contact lasted between five and 10 seconds, she said.
Janitor Antonio Avola, 66, admitted touching the student — though he denied putting his hands down her pants – and said it was a joke.
The judges assumed that the student, who has not been publicly identified, and noted in her verdict last week that her friend witnessed the incident.
But they ruled that the janitor was not guilty of any crime because his actions were “clumsy but lackluster,” Corriere Della Sera reported — and lasted “a few seconds.”
The student’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
The decision has sparked a wave of outrage in Italy, where social media users have posted videos to protest the decision, using the hashtag #10secondi, meaning 10 seconds.
Many post videos of themselves touching or being touched in the chest or buttocks for 10 seconds to show how tedious and uncomfortable such an experience can be.
“White Lotus” star Paolo Camilli shared a clip on Monday showing him touching his own chest, with a countdown on the screen. A caption read: “Brief groping, if it lasts less than 10 seconds, is not considered a criminal offence.”
A user shared a similar video with the caption, “You don’t have the right to touch her.” [women], not even for a second. Let alone five or ten.”
Another Instagram clip showed a woman threatening to report a man while he was touching her buttocks.
“One moment,” the man replies before taking his hand away a moment later. “Nine seconds – that’s not a crime!”
The woman who posted the video questioned why the intent or duration of the action mattered more than the victim’s consent or response – and bemoaned why the state failed to protect victims.
“Ten seconds is an eternity, anything but ‘short,'” one commenter replied to another video shared on TikTok.
The verdict is reminiscent of another Italian case from 2016, when a court in Sicily ruled that a man accused of groping female colleagues was not guilty of sexual harassment because he was more of “an immature and inappropriate sense of humor” when motivated by sexual desire.
The following year, the country’s justice minister ordered an investigation after a judge acquitted a man of sexual assault because the woman neither screamed nor cried for help during the alleged assault.
A sexual assault case was dropped because the woman did not scream during the alleged assault
Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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