Italian Supreme Court of Cassation, Criminal Section VI, No. 48272/2009, 7 October 2009

Recourse against conviction for the crime domestic violence, victim being the defendant’s minor son. Role of cultural factors influencing the offending conducts and distinction with the crime of abuse of means of correction and discipline.

Art. 2 Italian Constitution

Art. 3 Italian Constitution

Art. 30 Italian Constitution

Art. 32 Italian Constitution

Art. 571 Italian criminal code

Art. 572 Italian criminal code

The crime of domestic violence, and not that of abuse of means of correction and discipline, shall be deemed to be committed when a parent repeatedly carries out acts of physical and moral violence against a minor child, even if the agent considers such acts to be compatible with a corrective and educational purpose, in keeping with his possibly specific socio-cultural conception.

Indeed, fundamental values of the legal system (enshrined in the principles set out in articles 2, 3, 30 and 32 of the Italian Constitution) are at stake in this matter, and form part of the Italian nation’s visible and consolidated ethical-cultural heritage and of the supranational context in which the same nation is embedded and, as such, are not susceptible to subjective derogations and cannot be the subject of a valid exception of excusable ignorance by those who live and work in our territory and are therefore subject to Italian criminal law.

(Case concerning a defendant who subjected his son to repeated acts of physical and moral violence. the defence argued that the Court of Appeal had wrongly qualified as crime of domestic violence the conducts, that integrated instead a case of abuse of the means of correction and discipline, in consideration of the specific cultural customs of the agent.)