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Dino Maglio
Dino Maglio, a former police officer in Padua, was jailed for six-and-a-half years in April.
Dino Maglio, a former police officer in Padua, was jailed for six-and-a-half years in April.

Couchsurfing rapist Dino Maglio escaped investigation for months

This article is more than 8 years old

Italian ex-policeman – convicted last month of raping Australian girl – fell through bureaucratic cracks after American woman filed a complaint in the UK

Women travelling in Italy were left at the mercy of a suspected serial rapist in the city of Padua for more than a year after authorities in Italy and the UK failed to cooperate on a rape complaint by a student that was filed in England in 2013.

Italian authorities were sent a formal complaint, forwarded by British police, that alleged Dino Maglio had used the Couchsurfing.com website to lure a 20-year-old American woman to his home, and drug and rape her in spring 2013.

But an investigation by the Guardian, in conjunction with journalists at the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), into the handling of the case found that the complaint fell through bureaucratic cracks and was not investigated for months, despite the woman’s multiple attempts to pursue justice.

Maglio was later convicted of drugging and raping a 16-year-old from Australia who had also stayed with him. According to witness statements more than 15 other women believe they were drugged and abused in the period between the first rape complaint and his arrest a year later.

The lack of coordination highlights how rudimentary law-enforcement collaboration can be across the EU in anything other than major international conspiracy cases.

Maglio, who went by the name of Leonardo on his Couchsurfing.com profile, is thought to have won the trust of his female guests because he was a police officer. Before he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail last month, he confessed to spiking drinks with tranquillisers and sexually assaulting his victim as she slept.

The American woman, Anna (not her real name), was still recovering from her ordeal when she went to a police station in Staffordshire, central England, in April 2013 and reported that she had been drugged and raped days earlier.

“I was not in the best state of mind then, naturally; I was still trying to process what had happened,” said Anna, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. “My report in a way helped me do that, reinforced the fact that I wasn’t just ‘crazy’ – that I was in fact a victim of a horrifying crime. It’s something I’m still trying to accept.”

After drinking what she believed was a spiked cup of chamomile tea served by Maglio, she recalled feeling suddenly exhausted. The next 48 hours were a blur, but she told the police as many details as she could: how she had seen flashes of Leonardo naked, how he had professed his love for her, how he allegedly had sex with her, even as she slipped in and out of consciousness. She had not even been able to articulate the word “no”.

She had chosen Leonardo as a host because he was a police officer, which made her feel it was a safe choice. “Afterwards he took me to the subway. I took a couple of buses. I have no memory of that but I have tickets telling me I took those buses,” Anna said.

Yet after the American’s statement, it was a year before police in Padua knocked on “Leonardo’s” door and arrested him.

Police and prosecutors could have tried to stop Maglio earlier, but rules in Italy and and lack of clarity about division of international responsibilities – and whose job it was to ensure that Anna’s complaint was pursued – hampered the case.

After leaving the Staffordshire police station, Anna recall ed she was told by officers that the process would be difficult and lengthy because her statement would have to be translated and sent to Italy.

“After that, there was just silence. There shouldn’t be silence,” she said.

Her complaint reached the desk of the prosecutor, Giorgio Falcone in Padua, in August 2013, but it was essentially meaningless under Italian law because it needed to be filed to an Italian authority before an investigation could be opened.

Officials in the prosecutor’s office say they tried to reach Anna by the email address she had given Staffordshire police. But she said she never received any message. The university email address listed on the Italian translation of her statement, which has been seen by the Guardian, mis-spelt the name of her internationally known university in the US.

Unable to find her, Falcone asked Interpol for help.

Later that month – four months after the initial rape complaint was made –documents examined by the Guardian show that Interpol was in touch with the Italian police attache at the Italian embassy in London, Giampietro Moscatelli, who asked for his name to be passed to the victim. This information was sent to John Wincott, Anna’s contact in the Staffordshire police department, according to emails.

By that time, Anna had returned to the US, but no one contacted her proactively, she said. When she sent an email to Wincott asking for an update in the case, he told her to file another complaint, this time at the Italian consulate in the US.

“The email was so incredibly unclear. I was just really confused about the whole process,” Anna said.

In the meantime, Maglio continued hosting young women he met through Couchsurfing.com, and Anna was struggling to cope with what had happened to her. “It really impacted me those first few months and my family,” she recalled. “I was untrusting of even my closest friends.”

Although she says she felt intimidated by the situation, Anna filed another report of her alleged rape to the Italian consulate in New York in September 2013. The consulate then sent the report by email to the secretary of the president of the court in Padua, which should have sent it to the prosecutor. But Falcone’s office said it had never received it.

Months later, in March 2014, Anna emailed Wincott again to find out if there was any progress on the investigation.

He responded: “I hope you are well … I have heard nothing regarding your case and I probably won’t now it has progressed to Interpol … If you have a contact number for them that you went to see [sic] in the States give them [a call]. If you have any major issues get back to me and I’ll see if i can find out for you.”

Asked about its handling of the case, the Staffordshire police force told the Guardian that it had sent all relevant information to Interpol and that it then became Interpol’s responsibility to communicate with the victim.

But Interpol offered a different story: it said its function was to act as a liaison between law enforcement officials in different jurisdictions. It declined to comment on the case.

Maglio was arrested on rape charges involving the Australian 16-year-old weeks later, but Anna was never informed. In an October 2014 email to Wincott, she asked once again whether there was an update. He indicated there was not. “Hope you are OK and let me know if you get an update,” he wrote.

It was not until Anna was contacted last month by the Guardian that she learned Maglio had been arrested for rape, was about to face a verdict in his case, and was allegedly involved in a string of other assaults.

“For the past few days, I’ve been incapacitated. I can’t bear to tell my family because I don’t like calling myself a number,” she said days after learning the news.

Lisa Longstaff, a spokeswoman for Women Against Rape, a victim support and advocacy group, said the “careless” response to Anna’s complaint was typical in rape cases.

“And if you ask me what is the reason, we say it is that rape has to be given a higher priority,” she said.

Anna is now in contact with Falcone in Padua. The prosecutor is expected to call for a new trial against Maglio.

  • This article was amended on 29 May 2015 to make clear that Anna is a pseudonym. A reference to a surname that was also used as a pseudonym has been removed

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