Ancona, teacher accused of harassment by three students for vendetta: acquitted after 6 years
Giovanni Di Presa, a teacher in Castelfidardo in the province of Ancona, was acquitted of sexual assault and mistreatment. He had gone to trial for having harassed four students and having dive another one. Di Presa was a temporary support teacher at Soprani middle school. The facts date back to 2018 and he received an acquittal in first instance in 2021 on the rape charge and another in the Court of Appeal for both crimes. According to the judges, the four teenagers who accused him had plotted revenge for the seizure of their cell phones. Di Presa speaks today in an interview with Corriere della Sera: “It all started in November 2018 with a summons from the trustee teacher of the school and accusations of sexual violence. Some students, and this is just one example, accused me of having touched their bottoms.”
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Di Presa says he established “a friendly relationship with the students, I called myself “Gianni”, I had given up on putting a wall between me and them, a border, I was almost a friend. Maybe thinking about it now it would have been more convenient to behave differently”. Then, after the seizure of a phone, everything changed: “I was looked at badly if I touched the knee of a boy who had hurt himself: but I did it because I am a physiotherapist, to be useful. According to these girls I committed violence in public. No one had reported me for hiding in a hidden place. This alone should have made it clear that I was innocent. And I don't rule out the possibility that someone reported me hoping to gain from compensation.”
In the end, Di Presa says he is ready to meet the students who accused him: “To ask them why they did it. In reality, I have already met some students by chance: I was photographed and the photo made the rounds in their chats, amidst teasing. I believe it should be the families who ask for an account of events like this: because in my opinion the school still works, but it is the families who often give up their role. I weighed 120 kilos, then this odyssey made me lose thirty. But I would like to go back to teaching. Even in that school, without rancor”
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