She was asking for it
Hey, baby, lighten up, it was just a joke, don’t you have any sense of humor, what’s your problem, bitch?
Italians have reacted with outrage after a 66-year-old school cleaner escaped punishment for groping a female pupil because it “only lasted about ten seconds”.
The 17-year-old schoolgirl was walking up a flight of stairs between classes when the janitor, Antonio Avola, put his hand inside the waistband of her trousers and inside her underwear from behind.
When she confronted him, he responded: “Come on darling, you know I’m only joking,” according to other students who witnessed the incident, which happened at a high school in Rome in April last year.
Ah yes, it’s such a funny joke to be walking up some stairs on the way to a class and have a man’s hand suddenly thrust down the back of your underpants. What could be more hilarious?
The school caretaker was charged with sexual assault and sent to trial. Prosecutors had called for a sentence of three and a half years in prison.
But a court in Rome ruled that his groping had “only lasted between five and 10 seconds” and that his hand had not “lingered” down her underpants for very long.
That’s fine then! Fine fine fine! Girls are public property as long as you’re quick about it.
In her first comments on the case, the schoolgirl said on Wednesday: “For me it was no joke. A joke is something shared between two people. This is not the way that a janitor should joke around with a young girl of 17. I’m very angry. This is not justice. I feel betrayed twice over – first by the school, where it happened, and now by the court.”
Aw jeez. No sense of humor at all. What a prude. Girls just wanna have fun!
For many critics, the case reflects the casual sexism and objectification of young women that is still widespread in Italy.
The late Silvio Berlusconi provoked indignation late last year when he promised players at the football team he owned “a coachload of whores” delivered straight to their dressing room if they won their next match.
Oh come on. Everybody knows that’s all women are good for.
Yes, this girl’s buttocks are like a piece of food that fell on the floor – ten second rule!
I wonder if the ten second rule holds for a jocular visit from her family with some humorous garden tools.
Oh boy! Can I go to Italy and put my hand down a boy’s pants for a few seconds?
Probably not.
But what was the joke? Sure, we can joke about whatever, but there actually has to be a joke somewhere. The bare thing isn’t a joke per se; it’s just the thing. Groping a girl isn’t a joke per se; it’s just groping a girl.
Ah, well, you see, it’s funny because he’s pretending to be the kind of guy who would put his hands down a girl’s underpants without consent, when actually he’s obviously not the kind of guy who would do that, which we know because… well, because he just obviously isn’t, or else he wouldn’t do things like …uh, hang on, let me try that again.
There’s a somewhat-related (though several orders of magnitude less creepy) phenomenon where people try to give themselves plausible deniability when broaching a sensitive subject or proposition. Like, if your platonic friend starts going on about how “wouldn’t it be FUNNY if WE slept together? I mean, that would be so WEIRD and FUNNY, right? Ha!” then that friend totally wants to fuck you and is hoping you’ll say that no, that wouldn’t really be weird, it would kind of make sense…. but if you were to call them on this ploy, they would insist that no, they were totes joking!
Well his joke wasn’t funny but your first paragraph is.
I would love to hear the legal distinction between a jocular grope compared to one that is serious and sober. As far as I can tell, there is still a hand down someone’s pants without their consent, but I’m sure the court ruling made the distinction clear. Right?
Holms, I suspect the judge cited the venerable legal rule of “bros before hos.”