Abuses on altar boys, asked for 6 and 4 years for defendants

• Vatican, ascertained gay relationships in altar boys: new investigations underway

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July 16, 2021 Six years in prison for Don Gabriele Martinelli, 29, for acts of aggravated rape and aggravated acts of lust, and four years for Don Enrico Radice, 71, for aiding and abetting. These are the requests for condemnation of the Vatican Promoter of Justice, in the hearing that took place yesterday in the Vatican Tribunal in the context of the alleged abuses in the San Pius X Preseminary, managed by the Opera Don Folci of the diocese of Como, of the so-called 'altar boys of the Pope'. A parallel trial for the same facts is also open to the Court of Rome.

The Vatican Promoter of Justice, Roberto Zannotti, asked for 8 years of imprisonment, reduced to 4 years, for Don Gabriele Martinelli for the crime of aggravated rape and another 4 years of imprisonment, reduced to 2, for aggravated acts of lust. Therefore a total of 6 years of imprisonment, reduced for the minority of the accused at the time of the facts. Pg Zannotti defined the punishable period from Martinelli's turning 16 on August 9, 2008 (therefore not from the beginning of the reported violence, between 2007 and 2012). According to Vatican law, in fact, the Promotor of Justice explained during the hearing, anyone who has not turned 16 when he committed the crime is not punishable.   

Requests for the former Rector of the Preseminary, Monsignor Radice, accused for aiding and abetting, 4 years of imprisonment. Zannotti explained that this crime has been configured as follows, since the Vatican criminal law does not provide for the crime of complicity in sexual violence, for which the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating instead. 

Promoter of Justice: "Acts of violence, not children's things"

It was a question of real "acts of violence" and not of "children's things". This is the premise of the Promotor of Justice who recalled the threats that Martinelli would have addressed to LG, starting with the blackmail of granting him important roles in the liturgical service of the papal masses in exchange for sexual favors ("Come on, then I make you serve the mass to the Pope "). "It seems blasphemy to me," said the Vatican prosecutor. The magistrate believes that there was no consent to the acts on the part of the victim: "Consent must not be confused with participation in the act". On the former Rector Radice, Zannotti said that his behavior is "even more serious" than sexual violence, "both for the position and for the obstinacy to cover up facts that are evident to all".

The victim's lawyer: "Thirst for power"

"The story of the alleged abuses in the San Pio X Preseminary, which hosts the so-called 'altar boys of the Pope', must not be focused on homosexuality but on the abuse of power", said the lawyer of the victim LG, Dario Imparato. The lawyer has reconstructed the entire story of LG, starting from his entry into the San Pio X in 2006 and the violence of the accused Don Gabriele Martinelli which began the following year. According to the lawyer, the perspective in which to insert the story is not "Martinelli's homosexuality" but "the perspective of power", "the violent exercise of a powerful and arrogant subject, who, before satisfying his libido, he wanted to satisfy his thirst for power. "

Power coming from "an unhealthy relationship" with the rector Don Enrico Radice, the other defendant in the trial. In particular, Imparato insisted on LG's lack of consent, also recalling the Me Too movement. And he recalled "the bad, unhealthy, rotten climate" which, according to various witnesses, characterized the Pre-Seminary. "This story tells of the failure of small closed communities, impermeable to the outside", which favors "abuses of power". "It's the tip of the iceberg," he said. Therefore he asked for the condemnation of both defendants: "I would never think that Martinelli in the next decades will be able to claim the acquittal for facts that this defense considers serious". "Often to process a system,you have to process a single ". 

Don Radice's lawyer, Agnese Camilli Carissimi, stressed that "from the abundant facts that emerged, nothing has been highlighted" about the former Rector. The lawyer stressed that all the accusations of LG and Kamil Jarzembowski (the former Polish pupil, the only eyewitness) started after the expulsion of the latter from the Preseminary. He then spoke of "revenge" and asked for Radice's acquittal with a full formula: "It is difficult to imagine a sentence with such a lack of evidence".

The Preseminary, where the abuses would have occurred, when the abuser and the victim were both minors, is located in Palazzo San Carlo, a few meters from Casa Santa Marta, where Pope Francis resides. who recently established that from September the structure will move outside the Vatican walls.