Stalking and domestic violence charges in Italy

The offences

Stalking requires repetition and one of three specified effects: persistent anxiety or fear, well-founded fear for safety, or a forced change in habits. Ill-treatment requires habituality within a family or comparable relationship. Neither is made out by a single episode, and the boundary between an acrimonious separation and a criminal course of conduct is where these cases are argued.

The measures, and why they arrive so quickly

Two measures dominate: removal from the family home, and a prohibition on approaching places frequented by the complainant, with a minimum distance set by the court and a ban on any form of contact including through third parties. Electronic monitoring is now considered as a matter of course.

For a listed group of offences these measures may be applied outside the ordinary limits of penalty, which is why they appear in cases where no other precautionary measure would be available at all. Removal is immediate: the person leaves that day, often without documents, clothes or anywhere to go.

• Apply at once for authorisation to return under supervision to collect documents, clothes and work equipment.
• Ask the court to regulate contact with children, in time and place: where nothing is provided for, a vacuum forms that damages everyone.
• Ask for the prohibited places to be specified where they overlap with work or the only available accommodation.
• Where an order to pay maintenance is made, note that it is enforceable and is communicated to the employer.

Breach is a new offence, and contact means contact

Article 387-bis makes breach of a removal or non-approach order a criminal offence in its own right. It is charged frequently, and usually for conduct the person did not think of as a breach: a message to clarify something, a call from a different number, a message passed through a relative or a mutual friend.

The prohibition on communication covers every means and includes indirect contact. Where an encounter genuinely happens by chance, the correct course is to leave immediately and to record the circumstances. Remaining on the spot, even silently, is what is later read as a deliberate breach.

What the defence works on

These files are built almost entirely on the complainant's account together with messages, and they are examined on the same terms as any other evidence.

• Repetition and the specified effects. Both are elements of the offence and both must be proved, not asserted.
• The complete exchange. Messages produced in isolation frequently carry the opposite meaning within the full thread, and acquisition of the whole exchange is often the most effective single request.
• Chronology. Where the complaint follows a separation, a custody dispute or a financial claim, the sequence of events matters.
• Reciprocity. In many of these cases both parties have filed complaints, and each is simultaneously suspect and complainant.
• Proportionality of the measure, and whether a lighter one would meet the concern.

None of this is an argument that the complaint is untrue. It is the ordinary work of testing evidence, and it is the more necessary because the measures arrive before any of it has been examined.

Frequently asked questions

If a measure has been served

The review deadline is ten days from enforcement, and the applications for return and for contact with children should be filed in the same days. First contact is free and covered by professional privilege.