A promise of a better life in a neighboring country has ended in years of violence, fear and humiliation for an Albanian woman EM, and her two children, KS and RS, born from the woman’s previous marriage.
An 80-year-old man from Presicce-Acquarica, in the province of Lecce, has been sentenced by the First Criminal Section of the Italian Court to 3 years and 3 months in prison for the criminal offenses of domestic abuse and injury.
According to the court’s decision, the convicted person is also deprived of the right to exercise public functions for a period of five years. The trial panel set a preliminary compensation of 25 thousand euros for his wife and her minor son, as well as 10 thousand euros for his adult daughter, while the full amount of the compensation will be determined in a civil trial. The Italian prosecutor’s office, which proved the charges in court, had initially requested a sentence of six years in prison.
The investigative file revealed a series of serious episodes of physical and psychological violence that occurred between 2017 and May 2021. The man had brought the Albanian woman, much younger than him, to Italy, along with her two children from a previous relationship, promising her economic support, but their life soon turned into a nightmare under a strict control regime.
The prosecution documented that the 80-year-old controlled their every move, did not allow them to go out freely, prevented them from attending school regularly, and forced them to wake up in the early hours of the morning to clean the apartments he rented. The violence was accompanied by constant insults and death threats.
He allegedly insulted and threatened them repeatedly with the following phrases: “Either go to Albania or I will kill you”, “you are dogs, you are parasites that I keep in my house, I feed you”, “I am the boss who commands and you are the dogs that I feed”.
While addressing his wife (who had undergone surgery to remove her uterus): “You are no longer useful! No one loves you. You are useless,” while also using violence against family members.
In October 2017, he violently hit the face of the minor RS, (at the time 6 years old), causing him to fall on the kitchen radiator, causing a wound to the front of the head with significant blood loss, an event for which he was transported to the Emergency Room of Tricase Hospital.
Also, the woman’s daughter was physically raped on various occasions and threatened with stones, while the Albanian wife herself was grabbed by the throat and threatened with her life when she asked for a divorce.
In the summer of 2019, entering the bedroom and noticing that the girl KS was still asleep at 8:00 a.m., he asked her to get out of bed, asking her to clean the house, while simultaneously hitting her in the face, causing a cut in the corner of her eye.
He then followed the girl, who had run crying into the bathroom, and continued the attack, slapping her again.
In August 2020, noticing that KS was not at home, but had gone to the beach with friends, he approached the girl on the beach and, after finding her, began to insult her and, grabbing a stone, threatened to throw it at her. After they returned home, the man continued to attack the girl, grabbing her by the hair and putting his hands around her neck, telling her that she could not go out anymore.
In February 2021, when the woman expressed her desire to separate, her husband responded by squeezing her neck and declaring that he wanted to kill her.
On February 28, 2021, after learning that his wife and children had taken a walk on the beach that afternoon, he became angry and the next day, out of anger, he raided the children’s room, then filmed KS’s underwear and posted the videos on social media. He then uttered the insulting phrase “you and your daughter are whores, you should stay home and not go out”. There he forcibly pushed EM, who asked her husband to delete the video. But he also attacked his daughter KS, who in the meantime intervened to protect her mother. The violent old man attacked her by grabbing her hair and forcibly pulling her head, thus causing KS injuries consisting of “mild cervicalgia”, which is judged to heal within 5 days. While his wife EM suffered “lumbosacral, coccyx and pelvic contusion”, with a prognosis of 7 days.
On March 12, 2021, he refused to provide financial assistance to his wife, refusing to give her the money requested to meet her and her children’s needs, and ordering her to leave the house.
On March 17, 2023, he threatened the minor RS with the phrase: “When mom comes home, tell mom to take them both so you can leave here, otherwise I will kill all three of you. You have to go to Albania.”
Upon his mother’s return, EM, he scolded her (“you haven’t left my house yet”), physically assaulting her with a slap on the right side of her face, which caused a cut on her lower lip and anxiety.
On May 10, 2021, after arriving near Hotel M. in Marina di Salve, EM’s workplace, he parked his car in front of the woman and honked his horn to scare her.
The woman, of Albanian origin and much younger than the defendant, had been brought to Italy by him along with her children, with the promise of starting a new family and escaping her previous poverty. However, she soon fell victim to her husband’s domineering and violent nature.
The investigations by the Italian authorities began after the mother and daughter repeatedly appeared in the emergency room of the Tricase hospital with visible physical injuries, which led the white shirts to raise the alarm about domestic violence and reconstruct the long history of abuse that led to the conviction of the elderly man.