Elle wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:40 am
I half agree with this statement of yours.
It's true that some cases aren't prosecuted, but very often because they're unfortunately not reported.
This is true all over the world. If we want to actually do something about it, we can't look at it on an individualist case and victim basis, but rather as a natural, inevitable/necessary manifestation of broader systemic issues.
There are structural social, political, legal, economic reasons why sex crimes consistently go under-reported, and where, when and why they do. The specific circumstances and contributing factors will differ based on location, socioeconomic status etc but they are common threads expressed in different forms.
In most cases, the abuser is in some place of power and the abused has the expectation that reporting it will have no positive outcome. Sadly, that is in many cases quite realistic, though I see some aspects of positive change happening.
This is one of the reasons why domestic and sexual violence is under-reported when it is conducted by police officers, politicians, high profile athletes, businessmen and so on. Victims are afraid of being dismissed (at best), losing jobs, facing threats and so on.
The same is true of assault and worse by sex tourists using poverty as a form of coercion in South East Asia, South America and Africa. The reality of many of these men and women from countries with an active sex trade (USA, AUS, GER, JPN etc.) who go to these countries, is that they can get away with raping a 15 year old because the kid and the kid's parents are often not in a position to say no. Poverty under the imperial exploitation of the third world kills you with much more certainty than even a rapist.
In both and all of these cases, there are factors that provide incentives for violent sexual acts and coercive factors that make reporting or resisting less likely.
Elle wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2026 9:40 am
In Italy, especially in recent years, there's been a great deal of attention paid to women who claim to be victims of abuse, to the point that often their word is enough to start a trial.
Take the Pizzolato case. This drunk Finnish tourist voluntarily followed the four boys into their home. This is the only thing that's certain, along with the fact that they later took her home and that the hospital emergency room report showed no injuries from sexual assault.
What happened in that house? She says she was raped; they say she consented. Where's the truth?
It makes me think that what started out as consensual then became non-consensual. She, under the influence of alcohol, was consensual, then she recovered, withdrew her consent, and they stopped.
I don't want to be Pizzolato's lawyer, and, having heard some past stories about him (I don't know if they're 100% true), I think he really did something with his friends. However, I wonder how he can be legally convicted under these circumstances.
(All the information I have is based on newspaper reports; I may be missing something.)
I can't speak to the specifics of Italian law. On a wider societal level we must understand that to be drunk and surrounded by four men in their apartment, having no means to actually resist a rape or other violence, is necessarily a coercive and non-consensual situation. If I were in her situation, I'd mostly try to not get murdered.
On a tangent, I find the discourse around the specifics of consent understandable from a legal basis but tiresome from a moral basis. It's trying to apply a band-aid on the individualism that results in people seeing themselves as atomized individuals (Thatcher et al.), as opposed to threads woven and interconnected within the wonderful, complex, abundant tapestry of society, life and existence. It is only logical that people who see themselves and others only as individuals, will not care if they do harm to those they see as insignificant or lesser.