Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke out in defense of her partner, Italian journalist Andrea Giambruno, after he appeared to blame the victim when discussing the gang rape of a young woman.
The far-right leader claimed Giambruno’s words were misinterpreted when a journalist at a press conference asked about his comments, La Repubblica reported. “I think Andrea Giambruno hastily and assertively said something different from what has been interpreted by most,” Meloni said. “In those words, I don’t read ‘if you walk around in a mini skirt they can rape you.’”
Giambruno, who hosts the show “Diario del Giorno” on Rete 4, came under fire from politicians and celebrities when he suggested on the show in August that women could avoid rape by not getting too drunk.
“If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk … but if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems because then you risk finding the wolf,” Giambruno said on his show, referring to rapists as wolves.
Criticism poured in over the following days.
“We must teach boys to show respect, not girls to be prudent. Teach them [boys] the value of consent, not girls the value of mistrust,” Cecilia D’Elia, a senator with Italy’s center-left Democratic Party, said. “If a girl drinks too much, she can expect a headache, not rape.”
The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) said in a statement that “Giambruno’s words are unacceptable and shameful” and “they represent a male-dominated and retrograde culture.”
Even Italy’s most popular influencer, Chiara Ferragni, criticized Giambruno’s words, calling them “pure victim-blaming.”
Giambruno later denied he was victim-blaming, saying he never justified rape and that his words were misinterpreted.
Meloni added, during her response, that her mother gave her similar advice as a young woman. “I see it as something similar to what my mother used to tell me when I left the house as a girl: eyes open and head on your shoulders,” she said.
She continued: “I think it’s advice that many parents would give to their children. I don’t find any justification in it for people who rape.”
The PM also asked journalists to stop questioning her over the words of a journalist who, she said, should benefit from freedom of the press.
“I beg you for the future not to ask me to account for what a journalist, in the free expression of his work, declares on television,” Meloni said. “I do not think that I should be the one to say what he should say.”
Giambruno is Meloni’s long-term partner and they have a seven-year-old daughter.
