Italy: Reported Sexual Assaults in Milan on New Year's Eve

This past week, we reported on the outrageous behavior of many foreign youths on New Year’s Eve in Milan. It now seems that the problems were not confined to climbing onto monuments and insulting Italy. A group of young Belgian females have reported to a local paper in Liege, Belgium, where they are attending university, that they were present in Milan on Pizaa Duomo New Yera’s Eve and were sexually assaulted by dozens of young men, not Italians, who groped them. The matter is now being investigated by local police and prosecutors in Milan.

The below article from Il Giornale is translated by Fousesquawk. Note: This article reports the number of girls assaulted as 4. The French-language Belgian daily, Sudinfo, mentioned in the below article reports the number of victims as 6.

“Gang violence”: Investigation begins in Milan

The prosecution moves on the case of the Belgian girls who were molested.  Chief of Police: 

“25,000 people on the square, largely foreigners.”

Cristina Bassi, January 7, 2025-05:00

The Milan Prosecutor’s Office is opening an investigation on the (cases) of sexual violence, first reported in a newspaper in their country and quickly reported formally to the police, of 4 young tourists who arrived in Milan for New  Year’s Eve. The case is for the crime of gang sexual violence committed by persons, for the moment, unknown (form 44). 

The girls, students from Liege between the ages of 20-21, were in Duomo (Cathedral) Square for the festivities together with two friends. They told the daily newspaper, Sudinfo, of having lived through a “nightmare with their eyes open” that lasted about ten minutes: They were surrounded by a group of 30-40 young men, who appeared not to be Italian, some of them held the hands of the victims while others groped them over and under their clothes. The tourists were also insulted and shoved among the crowd that shielded the attackers, then were helped by “an Italian gentleman whose wife was also molested.” A situation that brought back memories of what happened New Year’s Eve 2022, for which some young men of North African origin were sentenced on appeal to up to five years in jail.

Sudinfo explains that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Quintin, is following the story “closely”. And that the “group of friends will file a complaint in the coming days to the Liege police”. Also whether that office can proceed against the crime of sexual violence. Meanwhile, the Vulnerable Groups Section, led by (Italian) Assistant Prosecutor, Letizia Mannella, is coordinating the cases with the Mobile Squad (National Police, Milan Police Hqs). The investigators are downloading the images from the surveillance cameras, and in the coming hours, will begin to analyze them to try to find confirmation of the account given by the Belgian student who provided her name and was interviewed by the local paper. The officers are also identifying other members of the group to hear their testimony. The identifying details and telephone number of one of the boys have already been discovered, and he will be contacted to take his statement, as will be the student who spoke personally. The 20-year-old, who is in shock and now in the care of psychologists of the Liege University Hospital, has stated that “the attack happened after midnight. I think about 20 minutes after, at the entrance to the Galleria (shopping arcade), not very far from where some police officers were positioned.” According to the young woman, the policemen were not in position to see the attacks “because we were behind a column. There was a lot of confusion, so many people. We were surrounded by so many men.” Yesterday, the Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanche, along with a delegation of the Fratelli d’Italia (party), met with the chief of police of Milan, Bruno Megale. “In Milan,” he said, “there is a security emergency that is clear to all”. And he added: “We are in solidarity (with the police, editor’s note) after the serious acts on New Year’s Eve in Duomo Square”. (He was referring) to the videos in which some foreign boys insulted Italy and the police. 

Megale emphasized that the square “was handled in the best possible way. I can only state that we had a very large deployment of security with more than 800 people, and that in the square, we had to handle 25,000 people, of whom a large number were foreigners.”