Parents compensate for sexual violence committed by their son

The parents are civilly liable for failing to pass on the right values to their underage son, who commits the offences of lechery, rape and grievous bodily harm to the detriment of a child. No guilt can instead be charged, for failure to control, to the father and mother of the little victim who trusted the young man, a neighbour's nephew. The Court of Cassation thus dismissed the couple's appeal against the civil sentence to compensate the father and brothers of the injured party, including the share, as hereditary right, that would have been due to the mother, who committed suicide a few months after learning what had happened to their daughter.

For the Supreme Court, the boy's parents - who entertained the little girl in her room when neighbours visited the elderly grandfather with whom she lived - had not shown that they had taken care of their son's education, nor controlled his behaviour.

The defence based on the child's regular schooling is weak. The school, in fact, is not enough, because the educational obligation that is owed to the father and mother is much broader. And it concerns the commitment to follow the child's degree of psychological maturity, such as that of transmitting to him/her a system of values that must be the basis of a healthy social community. Also weighing against the parents, accused of miseducating the youngster, was the 'lack of any repentance' on his part. A repentance never shown that led the judges of merit to conclude that "the underlying moral-educational substratum did not allow the offender, even after many years, to express censure or disdain for his own hateful criminal actions"

For the Court of Cassation, therefore, it is not so much the negative proof of not having been able to prevent the act that is lacking as 'the positive proof of having imparted a good education to the child and of having exercised adequate supervision over him'. All this 'in conformity with the social and family conditions, the age, character and temperament of the child'.

The plaintiffs' attempt to equate their conduct with that of the plaintiff's parents does not pass. In the view of the couple's defence, in fact, eventhe girl's parents had trusted and had not checked what was going on in the room where the boy was apparating with her. An equalisation of responsibility that the Court emphatically rejects. The judges of legitimacy emphasise that the child's parents had seen the boy grow up and regarded him as an older brother of their daughter, so they had no reason to be suspicious when he invited her into his room to play with the computer.