Sending porn images to minor via messengers is sexual violence – Italy’s top court rules
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Sending pornographic images to a minor via WhatsApp can be legitimately prosecuted as sexual violence, Italy’s top court said Tuesday.
The supreme Court of Cassation rejected an appeal from a man who sent sexually explicit photos to an underage girl and asked her to do the same for him.
The Cassation Court’s rulings set legal precedents in Italy.
The Milan Review Court had confirmed the custody in prison ordered by the investigating judge for the suspect, and the defense, therefore, turned to the Supreme Court claiming that, in the case in question, the crime of sexual violence was not contestable, but , at the limit, that of solicitation of a minor, because, the defender noted, “the sexual act was missing”, since “no meeting” took place between the two, just as ‘child grooming’, that is “the practice of solicitation – observed the defense in the appeal – of a minor subject on the internet, through psychological techniques aimed at overcoming his resistance and obtaining the trust in order to sexually abuse him “.
According to the defense, therefore, “the conduct held by the suspect had not affected the sexual sphere of the minor due to the absence of any request for sexual intercourse aimed at satisfying his impulses”.
