Complaints, complaints, without ever having any consequences... The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Italy on Thursday for its passivity towards a woman who filed several complaints for violence against her husband.
“The Italian authorities remained passive in the face of the serious risk of inflicting ill-treatment on the applicant and her children and, through their inaction, created a context of impunity” for the husband.
This was the subject of seven complaints, some of which are still pending since 2016, the court explained in a press release.
Almost ten years of waiting
The seven judges of the Council of Europe's judicial body in Strasbourg all considered that Rome had violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.
The ECHR was seized in 2019 by an Italian woman born in 1978, mother of three, claiming that, since her separation from her husband in 2013, she had been the subject of threats and harassment from him.
She was also assaulted in November 2015, but her husband, returned to justice for the injuries inflicted, has not yet been tried, after a first hearing in April 2021.
Moral damage
"The Italian authorities have not carried out an assessment of the risk of ill-treatment which would have specifically targeted the context of domestic violence, and in particular the situation of the applicant and her children, and which would have justified concrete preventive measures in order to protect them from such a risk”, considered the ECHR.
The Court ordered Italy to pay 10,000 euros to the applicant for non-pecuniary damage.
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Italy
Violence against women
Domestic violence
Cedh
European Union (EU)