Sexual violence: a ban on the publication of details that pander to morbid curiosity

The publication of obscene details, which serve no informative purpose in relation to sexual violence, is intended solely to provoke perversely titillating thoughts and feelings. The publication, which reports in great detail on matters that undermine the victim’s dignity and right to privacy, therefore deserves sanction by the Data Protection Authority. The Court of Cassation has thus rejected an appeal by an online newspaper against the administrative fine of 15,000 euros imposed by the Data Protection Authority. The articles, which came under scrutiny by the Authority, concerned a gang rape of a young woman, also reported through the publication of WhatsApp messages that the perpetrators had exchanged after the attack, as well as wiretaps by the Carabinieri.

The code of ethics governing the processing of personal data in the course of journalistic activities, adopted by a regulation of the Italian Data Protection Authority in 2019, was already being put to the test by the very title, taken from a conversation between the young people. The exchanges on the social media group revealed ‘a portrait of the victim shaped exclusively by the self-congratulatory accounts of those who claimed to be the perpetrators of the violence, and by the comments they brutally expressed’. The article, in the view of both the Data Protection Authority and the Court, had certainly gone far beyond ‘what is necessary for the purposes of reporting on the news event’. Nor does it matter – the judges point out – that the victim herself subsequently gave interviews to the media.

The content of the article – perhaps beyond the editor’s intention, as the Court of Cassation acknowledges – added nothing of substance to the news already published by other newspapers in the preceding days, nor did it address any socio-psychological issues, but merely served to ‘stir up thoughts and perversely titillating feelings, or prudishness, or, at best, a sense of pity for the unfortunate victim; in either case, the informative purpose appeared to be reduced – as the judgement states – to very little, whilst the harm publicly and objectively inflicted on the victim”.

The Supreme Court therefore ruled out any public interest as justification for the published details, and rejected the claim that the right to criticise and report had been infringed, as argued, on the other hand, by the defence. The free exercise of the right to report news must take a step back in deference to the limits imposed by the Constitution to protect the fundamental rights of the individual.