THE problematic compatibility of the defendant's sexual anatomy with the rapid but not particularly violent manner in which he is alleged to have sodomized his victims needs, to be further investigated.
The above is taken from the judge's report on a preliminary hearing last month into an investigation concerning Italian television presenter and "showman" Valerio Merlone, accused of rape by two young, aspirant stars, Fatima M. and Ylenia V.
The investigation into Merlone emerged from the findings of a similar one into another Italian television star, Gigi Sabani, and a well known producer, Gianni Boncompagni.
Inevitably, the investigations have become the summer's best seller, combining, as they do, three of the Italian nation's greatest obsessions sex, fame and television. Nor has the media interest in this unambigiously titled "Sex and TV" scandal been diminished by fact that both presenters, both middle aged, have been regularity associated with mindless quiz programmes featuring not always fully dressed young female "assistants".
And of course reality has far outstripped imagination. Had a soap opera script writer produced the type of news, copy Italians have been reading in their daily papers, then he would either have been fired or accused of anti Italian racism.
Both Sabani and Merola, for instance, have temporarily been guests of the nation. Gigi Sabani spent most of his preventive detention under house arrest but Valerio Merola actually spent nearly a week in Rome's Regina Coeli prison, which currently houses former SS officer Erich Priebke.
"High point" in the drama came when Signore Merola presented himself for an audience with Judge Alessandro Chionna, the investigating magistrate, in the Piedmont town of Biella, about 70 kilometres from Turin. (The investigation was based in Biella and not Rome where the TV presenters live because the original allegations against Gigi Sabani were filed by once aspirant "star", Katia Duso, who lives in Biella. She claims she was forced to have sex with Sabani in order to promote her now abandoned TV career).
Signore Merola arrived equipped not only with a lawyer but also with a videotape, a love letter and a remarkable assertion about his physical propensities. Exhibit A, the videotape, contained images of an audition a sort of sexy dance routine done by one of Merola's accusers, the then 17 year old Fatima M., for his programme, Bravissima. According to him, the tape proves their subsequent sexual encounter in the Hotel Garden, Salsano was very much by mutual consent "These are images which prove just how sexually willing and available Fatima was towards me ... This [television] is a world where sex is easily come by", the told reporters.
Exhibit B the letter, concerns Signore Merola's other accuser, Ylenia V. The letter in question was written to Merola by then 16 year old Ylenia, after the date of the alleged rape, and includes the words "I have a huge desire to make love with you."
Exhibit C, Signore Merola's intimate equipment, could of course not be exhibited. Both women have accused him of acts of sodomy. Not possible, replies Signore Merola. "Yeah, you could say that I carry the real proof of the falsity of these accusations with me in my trousers. I even have a medical report which verifies it scientifically. I cannot possibly have a certain type of sex [anal sex] unless my partner consents fully. Everybody knows it, so much so that my friends call me Blunderbuss.
This remarkable line of defence not only prompted the preliminary hearing judge's remarks about "problematic compatibility" but, more surprisingly, helped Signore Merola regain his freedom. The inquiry is still ongoing but he has been released from preventive detention, a release which provoked no small amount of ironic comment.
"Given that I've got a big one, I'm innocent," wrote a leader writer in Rome daily, La Repubblica, who went on to complain about the "exceptional defence of the proud Merola, or better the proud defence of the exceptional Merola".
Nor did the tone of the public debate improve much when Gigi Sabani went on to the much watched Maurizio Costanzo chat show, where he and his host agreed that the hinterland of Italian television is populated by ambitious young girls, hungry for success, pressurised by over enthusiastic parents and ready for anything well, almost anything.
THE whole squalid affair hardly breaks new ground. The director's casting couch has long existed in the world of cinema, television and theatre. What the affair does underline however, is the increasing sleaze time element in Italian television which, largely under the influence of the TV empire of tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, has developed a whole new area of low rent voyeurism.
Quiz shows like Colpo Grosso, where the contestants get to take off more clothes the more questions they fail to answer, might seem in bad taste but they are relatively innocent. More squalid perhaps is the current wave of emotional voyeurism husbands and wives insulting one another as they relive their most intimate arguments boyfriend and girlfriend making up on TV lost relative returning after 30 years illegitimate son united with biological parents, etc, etc.
For the time being, the squalid Merola Sabani affair proves that not only are there questionable moral standards in and around the world of television but also that there are plenty of Italians keen to be, as Andy Warhol once suggested, "famous for 15 minutes".