An Italian nurse working on the frontline against the Chinese coronavirus was brutally sexually assaulted by an African migrant after finishing her shift and heading to her home.
The attack took place in the southern city of Naples last Sunday after the woman left work and was waiting for a bus to arrive to take her to her home to the town of Avellino.
The 48-year-old medic said she was forced to wait an hour for the bus due to the reduced travel during the coronavirus lockdown, and was alone with no-one else around, newspaper La Repubblica reports.
The nurse said the Senegalese migrant spotted her and “climbed over a fence and came towards me. I was immediately afraid, he looked threatening. He grabbed my arm. I immediately thought of a robbery. So, to save myself, I gave him the bag. ‘Take everything, there is money’, I said.”
“He said: ‘I don’t want your money, I have it.’ Then he yanked me and threw me on the ground. I saw my cell phone fly away, he ripped my jacket off me. I understood that it was over for me,” she said.
“He kept saying: ‘ Let me do what I want or I’ll kill you. Stand still and don’t scream. ‘ He was not a man, he was a beast that for forty-five minutes was on me,” she said.
Eventually, the nurse’s bus arrived and the driver helped the victim. Police arrived and arrested the attacker.
Senator Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s most popular party, the League (Lega), reacted with anger to the case on Twitter, saying: “While the government plans a huge amnesty for 600,000 irregular immigrants, this happens in Italy … Shame. Italians come first.”
A report released by the Italian Interior ministry in December of last year suggested that nearly half of the rape cases in Italy, 42 out of every hundred, involve a migrant attacker.