Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, Criminal Section VI, No. 10906/2017, 15 February 2017

Crime of domestic violence. Role of the socio-cultural condition that influenced the offending conducts and mitigation of the punitive treatment.

Art. 62-bis Italian criminal code

Art. 571 Italian criminal code

Art. 572 Italian criminal code

In case of responsibility for the crime of domestic violence against a minor child, the general mitigating circumstances can be granted to a defendant who, because of his ethno-cultural condition, considered as permissible corporal punishment that in his country of origin are not illegal, but, above all, did not realise the pathologies from which the son is affected (such as hyperactivity and attention disorders), and consequently was not able to manage his oppositional and provocative behaviours, wrongly attributing them to character aspects and therefore trying to contain them with methods that were not allowed, but wrongly considered educational.

(In the case in question, the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal has made recourse to the Court of Cassation complaining about the lack of motivation in the appeal decision in relation to the general mitigating circumstances that had been recognised for the two defendants. In the facts, the case was about two foreign nationals who had inflicted corporal punishment on their underage son, also causing injuries, believing it to be lawful according to the culture of their country of origin and not realising that the child's disobedient behaviours were linked to pathologies such as hyperactivity and attention disorder, which were later diagnosed during the trial in occasion of his placement in a sheltered facility.)