Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, Criminal Section VI, No. 11251/2010, 21 October 2010

Recourse against conviction for the crime of abuse of means of correction and discipline. The victim was the daughter of the defendant. Cultural factors that influenced the commission of the crime.

Art. 2 Italian Constitution
Art. 3 Italian Constitution
Art. 571 Italian criminal code

On the subject of the abuse of means of correction and discipline, referred to in article 571 of the Italian criminal code, the crime-type is realized by the use in an educational function of the abstractly illicit means, whether of a physical, psychological or moral nature, which transmogrifies into abuse both because of the arbitrariness or untimeliness of its application and of the excess in its measure. Such conduct, in the present case, cannot be excused by the need to shear the recalcitrant daughter, given that the mother, regardless of her place of origin and cultural background, had intended to continue her particularly dangerous operations precisely in order to assert her authority over the child.

(In the case in question the defendant not only verbally attacked her daughter, but also beat her and forcibly sheared her in the face of her refusal: the child, in fact, showed signs of beatings on her legs and wounds on her scalp, caused by the indiscriminate cutting of her hair with kitchen scissors. The defence had alleged the failure to take into account the cultural context of origin of the defendant, who came from Nigeria, a country with educational rules that differ from the Italian ones.)