Article 54. Investigations and evidence

This paper focuses on Article 54 of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. Specifically, Article 54 addresses the judiciary practice of discrediting the victim of sexual harassment or assault (the victim blaming phenomenon). This practice, which is mainly based on a number of gender stereotypes, has been reported by the United Nations as being common even in current times. This paper analyses the country-reports released by the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), with particular regard to the country-report on Italy. Although GREVIO positively assesses Italian relevant legal rules, this analysis suggests the need to take into consideration domestic Italian practice when monitoring the implementation of the Convention. Indeed, said practice reveals that gender stereotypes are far from absent in the Italian legal system and that the path toward a satisfactory implementation of the Convention is still long.