Italian police have launched a manhunt for a suspected North African attacker after a 56-year-old woman was beaten and sexually assaulted inside her own home in Livorno.
The attack reportedly took place in the San Marco area of the city after a man in his 30s entered the woman’s apartment building and found the door to her home half open.
According to Il Terreno, the victim had been cleaning when the stranger appeared at around 6 p.m., entered the property, and greeted her before allegedly turning violent. He is accused of forcing his way inside, shoving the woman against a wall, tearing off her bra, and pulling down her pants as she screamed for help.
The attacker then allegedly continued to push her against furniture while trying to rape her. The assault was only stopped when a neighbor heard the victim’s screams and rushed to help her, forcing the man to flee the building.
The suspect, described as being of North African origin and around 30 years old, disappeared before he could be detained. Police are now working to identify him, with investigators hoping security cameras in the area may have captured him arriving at or leaving the apartment building.
Emergency services were called after the attack, and the woman was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The victim told attending officers that she had suddenly found herself under attack in the place where she should have been safest. She later went to the police station in Livorno to file a formal complaint after being examined at the hospital.
An investigation has been opened into sexual assault and robbery.
“What happened is crazy, we still can’t believe it,” one shocked resident told local media.
Last month, a 22-year-old man from Mali accused of raping a woman in her seventies inside her home in Pistoia, was freed after an Italian court annulled his pre-trial detention on technical grounds. It found that the original custody order had not been translated into French, a language the defendant understands, and as such, the migrant was freed from pre-trial detention.
Also last month, seven suspects, all with foreign backgrounds, were charged with raping a 23-year-old victim in the Cesena countryside and filming the crime.
The victim was allegedly abused and filmed by seven youths during a drug-fueled party in early April. The suspects, described as being “born in the city but of African and Asian origins,” are aged between 19 and 25.
They reportedly took advantage of the victim’s state of intoxication, but the films they recorded on their phones may now be the deciding piece of evidence in their case.
In March, a 24-year-old man of Pakistani origin was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for the attempted rape of a 13-year-old boy in an Italian park in Campogalliano, in the province of Modena.
Last October, a Malian migrant was arrested for raping and brutally beating a 44-year-old Italian woman in the city of Sondrio as she walked home. During the incredibly brutal rape, the man bit off the woman’s entire ear, according to police.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently criticized judicial decisions blocking the detention of migrants transferred to Albania for deportation, citing the case of a Moroccan rapist whom authorities say they cannot deport after he applied for international protection.
“This is someone who entered Italy illegally, started dealing drugs, and gang-raped a woman — we can’t detain him, we can’t send him to Albania, we can’t repatriate him, and we’re almost forced to grant him international protection,” she said.
“How can we guarantee the safety of citizens like this?” she asked. “These decisions are surreal; they affect not the government’s work but citizens’ rights, first and foremost, the right to safety.”
Earlier this year, an Italian woman whose parents were murdered in a brutal attack by an Ivorian asylum seeker a decade ago accused the state of abandoning victims while prioritizing the rights and welfare of offenders.
Rosita Solano, whose parents, Vincenzo, 68, and Mercedes, 70, were killed in their home in Palagonia, Sicily, in August 2015 by an 18-year-old Ivorian asylum seeker, said she no longer feels like an Italian citizen because of what she described as a complete lack of protection and support for victims of violent crime.
“In Italy, those who commit crimes are protected, legally assisted with free legal aid, food, and lodging, while those who suffer a crime count for nothing,” she said. “Victims are abandoned and invisible.”
