Italian officials have condemned the alleged rape of a 13-year-old Italian girl by seven Egyptian migrants in Sicily. The young girl’s boyfriend was reportedly forced to watch as two of the migrants assaulted her.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has demanded chemical castration for rapists after the incident occured. Salvini said the girl was “raped by a gang of seven Egyptians” and that there can “only be one cure: chemical castration,” The Sun reports.
The girl was sexually assaulted in the Villa Bellini park in Catania, Sicily at around 7:30 pm on January 30th while out on a walk with her 17-year-old boyfriend.
A group of male teenagers then forced the girl and her partner into a public bathroom, where some of the young men held the boyfriend back while two others raped the girl.
Italian daily newspaper la Repubblica reported there are seven male suspects. Three of the minors allegedly entered Italy illegally between November 2021 and March 2023 as unaccompanied minors. The suspects are reportedly from Egypt and between 15 to 19 years old.
“Two grabbed me and others grabbed my boyfriend,” the girl told la Repubblica. “And they took us to the bathrooms of the villa. It was a nightmare, there was no one there at that time.”
She said she consistently attempted to free herself, as did her boyfriend, but the pair couldn’t overpower the group of teenagers. The girl said that during the alleged gang rape, they forced her boyfriend to watch.
“He was screaming, [and] he was desperate,” the girl told the newspaper. “I said: I beg you, I beg you, don’t hurt me, let me go.”
The alleged gang rape went on for thirty minutes at which time the couple finally broke free and escaped. They immediately alerted the Carabinieri, who caught the group within twenty-four hours.
Prosecution of Suspects Who Raped the Girl in Italy
The girl has identified two underaged alleged perpetrators of the rape, police said yesterday. One of them is said to also be one of the rapists, while the other was involved in holding the boyfriend back while watching.
The prosecutor confirmed that DNA evidence successfully linked one of the three minors to the rape. While the victim could reportedly definitively identify only two of the attackers, her boyfriend identified the other five, Corriere reports.
According to the Catania prosecutor’s office, the seven suspects are accused of sexual gang violence. Two of the suspects—one of them being the group’s oldest at 19—have reportedly been aiding the investigation. Both claim to have watched the attack without taking part in the rape.
The four adults have been arrested, while the three minors remain detained at the Precautionary First Reception Center in Catania. One of the minors allegedly attempted to escape, but was caught at home where he’d gone to grab some clothes, according to la Repubblica.
Sicily Home to Many Greeks Since Ancient Times
Catania, in Sicily, has a history dating back to ancient Greece, having been founded in the 8th century BC by Chalcidian Greeks in Magna Graecia, which consisted of Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy.
In the current day, Sicily is home to an ethnic minority of Greeks known as the Griko people, who live in the southern regions of Calabria and Apulia, especially the peninsula of Salento, within the ancient Magna Graecia region. These people speak a distinctive dialect of Greek called Griko.
They are believed to be descendants of the ancient and medieval Greek communities, which have resided in the south of Italy for centuries.
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