His name is Mirko Campoli, he is 46 years old, he is a professor of religion and he was the national leader of the Catholic Association until 2008. He is the man arrested by the Tivoli prosecutor’s office on charges of sexual assault on minors. He worked in a technical institute, was deputy director and was also responsible for the CA of Tivoli. He was arrested accused of raping four minors from 2016. According to the magistrate, the abuses also occurred during school trips. Among the controversial episodes there is also one that occurred in 2020 when the suspect, meanwhile suspended from teaching, worked in a family home in Rome that deals with minor victims of abuse. Two reports about him that reached the religious were never forwarded to the judicial authorities.
Resignation and investigation
By June 2021, Campoli had resigned from both school and religious positions. Thanks to the curriculum, she had found a job in a family home for minors. The fourth episode of abuse would have occurred right there. Ten days ago he was also suspended from that position. The investigators applied the electronic bracelet precautionary measure against him. Tivoli prosecutor Francesco Menditto said a child who came of age had the courage to report abuse that occurred at a young age. This started the investigation. The magistrate explained that “he was 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 listening, with understanding, with the right words to comfort the anguish of adolescence”.
“Unable to contain impulses”
The forty-six-year-old man “has repeatedly committed acts of sexual violence against minors, entrusted to him by relatives by virtue of the relationship of trust established over the years or in relation to his role as an educator. The suspect had no scruples in taking advantage of the trust placed in him, completely ignoring the serious repercussions of his actions towards minors, taking advantage of his young and complicated age, his inexperience, aware that buying gifts, the time he dedicated to them, the entertainment, the continuous financial donations, together with the support offered to their families, would have allowed them to obtain their silence”. According to the judge, the man “presents a total inability to contain his impulses, even despite the possible consequences of their conduct on the psychophysical state of the victims”.
religious authorities
Menditto pointed a finger at religious authorities: “You have to believe and trust them when they report and parents should immediately contact state authorities. Many parents rely solely on religious authority. Those who do not report should know that they will have more violence against other children on their conscience. We don’t want to have moral judgments, but if we had immediately had all the papers from the religious authority, we would have stopped him sooner.”
the code of silence
According to the prosecutor, the investigation papers also reveal a climate of silence similar to that of the Mafia. A “cloak of silence” over the many signals coming from victims who are often not believed. The investigation also had to deal with an environmental condition that often refutes what minors say. Also because “parents do not accept the idea that their child may have suffered violence, they try to cover up and hide.” Among the documents in the hands of the investigators there is also the testimony of a minor from whom total distrust of him emerges. “I will never report because they will never believe me and all this will lead to nothing,” says the boy.
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