The professor’s victims had already signaled for help but no one rescued them. Otherwise. “The climate of mistrust towards the statements of the minors did not allow a rapid intervention of the forces of order that could have prevented more sexual violence.” The chief prosecutor of Tivoli Francesco Menditto says it clearly the day after the arrest of a religion teacher, Mirko Campoli, from a school in Roma Este, also near Tivoli, aged 46, accused of having committed sexual abuse of children who at that time, before the closure, they were between 10 and 15 years old. At that school he had also been assistant principal and then, once suspended from teaching, he had gone to work at a family home in Rome, from which he had been suspended. “The records show – Menditto explains – that the minors had revealed in confidence, fearing that they would not be believed, as unfortunately happened later.” Now the investigation continues: “Anyone who thinks they have useful information. – it is the prosecutor’s invitation – you can contact the Tivoli police station on 0774/319482».
Violence in summer camps
The 46-year-old man was arrested by the agents, coordinated by the prosecutor’s office, who intervened after the first complaints dating back two months. The abuses would also have been committed by the teacher during summer camps and stays in other Italian cities where the victims went with their classes or study groups. However, from what emerged from the investigations, two complaints of abuses against religious structures where the 46-year-old man provided his work did not later result in complaints before the judicial authority, which was only discovered in March. And also on this point, investigations have been initiated to understand the reasons.
In addition, according to the prosecution, Prof. «he carried out the violence of which he is seriously suspected, also using the relationship of empathy that he created with the minors, gaining the trust of the families that he frequented as a close friendprodigal and generous”. Precisely in the precautionary order: it reads as if he were “a man impossible to hate, a second father, a person known and loved by all, capable of buying the silence of the victims with expensive gifts, but also with he listens to her, with understanding, with words suitable to console the anxieties of adolescence”.
“Friendly Relations with Families”
The suspect “after having created a relationship of trust and friendship with the minors and their parents – explains the note from the Prosecutor’s Office – is seriously suspected of having committed sexual violence, especially taking advantage of organized trips together with educational associations also of a religious nature, of which he was a part”. suspicious it is that there may have been other abuses.
Research on past reports.
In particular, the teacher is accused of having abused the condition of physical and mental inferiority of a child under 14 years of age, stopping only because of the national confinement between 2016 and 2020, and then also from a partner from 2018 to 2020 in the same way. And again: as an educator in a school camp, he raped another minor and “inside a training center” in Loreto, in the province of Ancona, in July 2017, finally in Rome on a minor under 14 years of age as an operator of the house family where he was.
For this reason, the Tivoli prosecutor plans to “collect any complaints of similar facts or in similar contexts, within the competence of this prosecutor, considering the recurrence of violence in various places and against various minors and the fact that investigations revealed that the victims or of them parents If they were rely or had reported various behaviors without them coming to the fore, also due to a climate of great distrust towards the victims”. On this, the chief prosecutor of Tivoli has argued a lot: “The climate of environmental silence is very similar to that of the mafia”.
“If we had known, we would have stopped him sooner”
“Whoever does not inform must know that he will have in awareness something extra violence to the detriment of others children – he adds – We do not want to make moral judgments, but if we had had all the letters immediately from the religious authority, we would have stopped him sooner”. “Parents do not want to accept the violence that their child may have suffered, they try to cover up, hide and not believe the minor – continues Menditto – They often turn to the religious authority that tends to stay with the matter. One of the boys, in fact, says: `I will never denounce because they will not believe me and all this will not lead to anything’ ».
