Supreme Court: insulting the husband is mistreatment even without vulnerability

The fact that the man who is the victim of his wife'soffences cannot be considered avulnerable person does not exclude the conviction of the woman for the crime of family abuse. The Court of Cassation thus upheld the appeal by the public prosecutor's office and her husband, who had acted as a civil plaintiff, against the Court of Appeal's decision to acquit the woman fornonsistence of the fact.

The territorial court had, in fact, excluded the crime against the spouse because thenon-serious insults and threats had no criminal relevance, in the absence of harassment of a vulnerable person. On the contrary, since the woman's over-the-top attitudes were a sign of discomfort, it was perhaps the assumed abuser who should havesupported hermaterially and morally. The judges of the second instance had instead given no value to thesuffering of the man who was systematically insulted in front of his son, for whose sake he remained in the family and endured the marital storms and the heavy family climate.

A view that the Supreme Court overturns. Although the man was not a vulnerable subject and although he did not shy away from intolerable cohabitation, he was nevertheless a victim of the offence of ill-treatment in the family, which can be committed even in the absence of physical violence and an intent to suffer. On the contrary, 'even the repetition of consciously offensive conduct', reads the judgement, 'supported by generic intent, which is such as to generate suffering in the victim, especially when such offences are capable of affecting the father-son relationship' is sufficient. The Court of Cassation annulled the woman's acquittal and referred the case back to the Court of Appeal, inviting it to review the judgment.