Sawt Falasteen - Campaigners warn Italy's gutted rape bill could help assailants

Lawmaker Laura Boldrini told AFP she had proposed a bill to end what she called "monster rulings" where judges deemed the woman's consent implicit "because she had accepted a lift home, or not locked a bathroom door".

The bill had an auspicious start.

In a rare cross-party collaboration between far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni -- Italy's first woman premier -- and opposition leader Elly Schlein, the lower house of parliament voted unanimously in November to adopt it.

"It was a historic moment," said Boldrini, one of Italy's highest-profile politicians, who has long used her platform to fight for human rights, despite death and rape threats.

Under the current law in Italy, victims have to prove physical coercion, threats or abuse of authority.

Campaigners hailed the bill's adoption in the lower house as a victory for the 23 percent of women in Italy who the National Institute of Statistics says have suffered sexual violence.

But it then got stuck in the Senate, when Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right League party -- and Meloni's coalition partner -- said the law could be used for revenge, and demanded it be reworded.

League senator Giulia Bongiorno told AFP it was blocked because a part of the right-wing electorate claimed the only way to prove consent under the new bill would be "a signed consent form", a suggestion "which caused a huge uproar" on social media.

- 'Back to square one' -

Consent-based rape laws already exist in several European countries, including in France, Germany and Spain.

The refusal to adopt the bill in its original form in Italy's Senate sparked protests across the country.

Bongiorno, a lawyer, has proposed a series of rewordings, but experts say they fail to account for the so-called "freeze response" often experienced during sexual assault, whereby victims are unable to say no or fight back.

Not only that: since the current rape law was adopted in 1996, Supreme Court rulings have quietly been bringing Italy into line with the Istanbul Convention, which is consent-based and which Rome ratified in 2013.

Any change that does not centre on consent would undo that progress and "return Italy to square one", since the previous rulings would not apply, Boldrini said.

Marta Cigna, a lawyer with Differenza Donna, an association that runs women's shelters, said Italy needs the "only yes means yes" law, because "culturally, women are presumed to be always available" to men.

She disputed Salvini's suggestion the law would overwhelm the courts, saying most victims refuse to report rape as the trial process is so harrowing.

- 'Facilitates rape' -

Any bill which does not centre on consent "gives defendants the tools to blame (women), to re-victimise them", Cigna said, arguing that such a move "facilitates rape".

"It also sends the wrong message to the younger generations," she added.

Experts say it is a pressing cultural issue. An ActionAid report from November on violence and gender inequality in Italy found "patriarchal models that legitimate violence persist among the younger generations".

The government has vetoed a series of proposals the opposition says would improve women's lives, from equal parental leave to a minimum wage.

It has also limited sex and relationships education in schools, which experts say is a key tool in tackling gender violence.

Boldrini, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party, accused the government of having a policy against "fighting discrimination and violence against women".

"And the law on consent is the most damning proof of this."

B.Mahmoud--SF-PST