The accused, a 27-year-old from Udine, entered the rooms while the patients slept. According to the psychiatrist who examined him, he was capable of understanding and willing
UDINE. In the order with which, last November, he had been placed in custody in prison, the investigating judge had spoken of “victims chosen at random: young and old, on the street or in a hospital room”.
Victims of sexual violence, only attempted in one case out of three, and of private violence, also escaped thanks to the woman’s reaction. “As if he were looking for the thrill of the risk, of getting closer to his capture – wrote the judge Matteo Carlisi, recognizing the danger of repeating the crime -, the profile of a serial aggressor / rapist is outlined”.
This will not be the case for a while. Sebastiano Luca, 27, originally from Aiello and living in Udine, was sentenced to 5 years and 8 months of imprisonment.
The sentence was issued by the gup of Udine, Carlotta Silva, at the end of the trial held, at the request of the defender, lawyer Patrizio Paolo Palermo, with an abbreviated procedure conditional on a psychiatric report. This task was entrusted by the judge to the psychiatrist Corrado Barbagallo and which ended with the ascertainment of the “ability to understand and will” of the accused.
Still detained (the GUP has ordered the suspension of the duration of the measure), Luca has also been banned from public office in perpetuity.
Prosecutor Luca Olivotto had asked him to be sentenced to a total of 8 years. But the penalty was reduced by both the acquittal, “because the fact does not exist”, from the hypothesis of the crime of private violence against a patient in a wheelchair, and the granting of generic extenuating circumstances in a regime of equivalence with aggravating. None of the women had filed a civil action.
Committed five months apart from each other, the two most serious episodes had as many rooms in the “Santa Maria della Misericordia” hospital as their theater. On June 26, 2020, it was a 79-year-old patient from Surgery who found the unknown one sitting next to the bed.
It was about 5 o’clock and he was putting his hands under her nightgown, in her private parts. Only the intervention of a nurse, called by the old woman, had put him on the run. On the following November 4, an 83-year-old hospitalized in Cardiac Surgery was woken up by her arrival shortly after midnight.
Forced to follow him to the bathroom, she was stripped, shoved in the shower and raped. Again, it was a nurse who stopped the abuse. Pursued by a social health worker, this time Luca was blocked and then arrested by the police.
The day before, at 11.30 pm, he had approached a 30-year-old who smoked in front of her home: he had lowered his pants and had chased her into the house. Only the request for help from the partner had made him desist. The defense, having read the motivation, will evaluate whether to appeal.