went on for more than two years. Schimizzi wrote to the other young men on Facebook Messenger, which was entered into court documents, that “The rape is difficult at first, but then she will calm down.”

Schimizzi was apparently not directly involved in the rapes, but rather directed them both in person and remotely. According to court documents, Maddalena was raped in cars, in the open countryside, and at some of the young men’s houses. She was made to pose for sadistic pornographic photos which they then shared among themselves, and she was forced to succumb to what the court describes as acts of “extreme sexual perversion” on the part of the seven men.

Finally, when Maddalena turned 16, nearly three years after the horror began, she wrote about theabuse in a creative writing essay for her English teacher, who was also the school psychologist.

At first the teacher, who cannot be named because she is under protective custody, alerted Maddalena’s parents, who were not exactly amicably separated at the time. The teacher says Maddalena’s father was indignant, but her mother, curiously less so, warned against denouncing the powerful Mafia families involved. The father, now also living under protective custody, held off for as long as he could, instead helping comfort and clean his daughter’s wounds when she came home from the rapes.

The father had first approached Iamonte and Schimizzi in early 2016 to warn them to stop abusing his daughter or he would go to police. According to court testimony, Iamonte told him not to bother, that