• Child abuse, former goalkeeper Matteo Sereni sentenced to 3 years

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04 December 2019The former footballer Matteo Sereni, former goalkeeper of Torino football, was acquitted of a charge of sexual violence against his minor children by the court of Turin. The investigating judge Francesca Firrao ordered the dismissal of the proceeding.

The judge accepted the argument of the footballer's defenders, the lawyers Michele Galasso and Giacomo Francini, according to which the minors "have been for a long time and repeatedly questioned in inappropriate ways and potentially suggestive of false memories by the separated wife Silvia Cantoro, by the mother-in-law Franceschina Mulargia and technical consultants in civil and criminal matters ".

The case over the years has seen the judicial authorities committed not only to Turin, but also to other Italian cities, and in the order of the subalpine court it is noted that "almost all the magistrates who dealt with the matter highlighted that the minors have been on more than one occasion heard in inappropriate ways " The children were asked several times "inside and outside the courtrooms" to retrace the facts.

The judicial odyssey of the former Turin and Sampdoria goalkeeper lasted nine years, a period in which he had been convicted of sexual harassment of a minor by the court of Tempio Pausania. The proceedings initiated in 2011 in the wake of a turbulent separation from his wife, for years prevented the former footballer from seeing his children. The trial proceeding started from Tempio Pausania, passed to Sassari and finally arrived in Turin due to territorial jurisdiction. Here the prosecutor Giulia Marchetti requested the dismissal of the charges for the footballer who, according to the reconstruction of the first prosecutor, had harassed his four-year-old daughter. The investigating judge of Turin, Francesca Firrao, accepted the request and the final filing of the case is now official.