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Dad jailed for leaving toddler in freezing car to go gambling

A Rome court has sentenced a father to jail for leaving his young child in a car during freezing weather while he played on slot machines in a local bar.

Published: 17 January 2017 12:16 CET
Dad jailed for leaving toddler in freezing car to go gambling
File photo of slot machines: Lisa Brewster/Flickr

An electrician and father of four has been charged with child neglect after leaving his three-year-old son alone in a car in the early hours of the morning.

A passerby spotted the toddler in the car at 3am on January 9th and alerted police.

With help from the child, they located the man, who was playing a poker video game in the bar in Ostia, a coastal city near Rome.

In court, the 34-year-old father claimed he had only been playing for around fifteen minutes after going into the bar to greet a friend, the Corriere di Roma reported.

While he waited, the child was reportedly trying to keep warm and attract attention by bouncing in his seat. He was wearing only a romper suit and the temperature at the time was -5C, as Italy has been suffering from unusually low temperatures and heavy wind and snow.

To make matters worse, the car had a smashed rear window, which had been replaced with fabric, according to Italian media.

The judge rejected a request from the defendant's lawyer to serve his sentence under house arrest. He has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail, during which time the child will stay with his mother.

Italy's gambling problem

A government report in October 2015 suggested as many as 1.3 million Italians are problem gamblers – but revealed that only 12,000 people were under treatment for addiction.

 

In early September this year, PM Matteo Renzi announced a plan to limit slot machines in Italy, including the complete removal of the machines from restaurants, hotels, beach resorts and shops, with a significant reduction in their number in bars and newsagents. The plan also included a reduction of hours during which machines can be operated and better regulation of casinos.

And over the summer, the town of Anacapri on the southern island of Capri became the first to completely outlaw slot machines after a referendum of the 6,000 islanders. Similar appeals had previously failed in the northern cities Bologna and Bergamo.

At the time, the mayor told The Local he hoped the move would persuade other towns to follow suit.

However, a volunteer with Gamblers Anonymous said that while outlawing machines in the town was a good start and might help prevent children getting involved, “compulsive gamblers will continue to find a way and can continue to buy scratchcards, bet online and place bets on sport.”

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LIVING IN ITALY

Five things to know about naming your baby in Italy

What's in a name? For international parents in Italy, choosing one for their baby means considering the country's laws and cultural norms, as well as the limits of the Italian bureaucratic system.

Published: 22 July 2024 17:37 CEST
Updated: 27 July 2024 07:46 CEST
Five things to know about naming your baby in Italy

If you’re an international resident having a baby in Italy, there’s a lot to understand and get used to.

From healthcare provision and parental leave to ideas about which foods to eat during pregnancy, things are likely to differ from your home country in all sorts of unexpected ways.

When it comes to choosing a name for your child, there’s more to know about Italian naming rules and conventions. This can become complex if your partner is Italian and you need to navigate two sets of laws and cultural norms – as well as finding a name which both sets of grandparents can easily pronounce.

For some new parents, the differences between Italy’s naming conventions and those of their culture of origin mean it turns out not to be possible to use the name(s) they’d initially wanted. But it’s always better to find out about possible issues ahead of time, rather than at the registry office.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re having those all-important baby name discussions with your partner.

Foreign names are usually allowed

Some countries have strict naming laws, but in Italy, there’s some flexibility. Although that doesn’t mean anything goes.

Under Italian law, the main restrictions are that a baby’s given name can’t be a surname, it can’t be “ridiculous or shameful”, and it must correspond to their sex.

Foreign names are generally accepted, as long as they are written in letters that exist in the Italian alphabet.

READ ALSO: What are the rules for naming your baby in Italy?

While Italian registry office officials can’t refuse to allow a name, they can refer questionable choices to the courts, which may rule against a name deemed not to be in the child’s best interest – and can order parents to choose another.

This system means that whether or not a moniker is allowed often depends on the local registrar, and how well a parent can argue their case for a more unusual name, as shown in past court cases where Italian parents have opted for something a little left-field.

But foreign parents are given some leeway, and names aren’t denied simply for not being traditionally Italian enough.

Still, traditional names remain overwhelmingly popular, especially for boys: Italy’s official list of the most popular baby names reveals that the top ten has long been dominated by centuries-old titles like Francesco, Leonardo and Lorenzo.

You can’t name them after a parent

Italian law states that children can’t have the same first name as a parent (not even when adding ‘Junior’) nor of a living brother or sister.

This means that people from families with a tradition of passing down the same name through the generations will be unable to do so if they’ve moved to Italy.

In Italy, particularly in the south, many families instead maintain a tradition of naming children after their paternal grandparents.

Middle names are unusual in Italy

If you suggest the idea of a middle name to your Italian partner, you may meet some resistance or confusion as the concept is pretty much unknown here.

As anyone with a middle name knows, having one in Italy can result in bureaucratic mix-ups (for example, when only your first name is used in one system or document, but both are entered in another.) You may also find that Italians insist on using both your first and middle names together.

READ ALSO: ‘Not easy, but worth it’: The ups and downs of raising bilingual kids in Italy

This is often because people assume it’s a ‘double name’ or nome doppio. This is not particularly common, but it essentially means someone has two first names and both are used together, for example Anna Giulia or Maria Stella.

This is even less common with boys. However, the only time Italian law allows for a traditionally female name to be used for a male is in the case of Maria as part of a nome doppio for a male, eg. Antonio Maria or Giovanni Maria.

You can give your child a second or middle name (or even two – up to three given names are allowed). But if you want it to be a middle name (and not a nome doppio) you may find you need to add a comma between the first and middle names when registering, which will mean only the first name is then legally required on paperwork.

If you’re thinking of giving your half-Italian baby a nome doppio instead of a first and middle name, be aware that this too might result in future bureaucratic headaches, as Italian computer systems aren’t always set up to handle these, either.

Perhaps to avoid this sort of confusion, Italian parents often give children composite names (nomi composti) which are essentially two first names joined together, such as Pierpaolo or Mariavittoria.

You can use both parents’ surnames

In Italy, a woman keeps her maiden name for life, and women don’t take their husband’s name upon marriage. (As a result, non-Italian women who choose to change their names on marriage often end up in a tangle with Italian bureaucracy.)

Traditionally, a baby born in Italy is given the father’s last name, resulting in the mother having a different name from the rest of her family. 

But in 2022, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that babies should be given both parents’ surnames, unless the parents decide to use only the last name of either the mother or of the father.

While using only the father’s name is still by far the most common tradition, a growing number of families are now choosing to give the baby the mother’s last name as well.

Italian naming practices now look set to become similar to those in Spain, where children’s surnames are usually composed of the father’s followed by the mother’s.

Most Italian families do not hyphenate a double-barrelled last name though, again conscious that Italian bureaucratic systems often will not accept a hyphen. 

You’ll need to be quick

Hopefully you’ll have a good idea of your baby’s likely name by the time of their birth, as you won’t have long to decide and register it.

In some countries, parents have more than a month to register the birth. It’s 42 days in England and Wales, for example, and up to 60 days in most parts of Australia.

But in Italy, new parents have three days to register the birth, and confirm the baby’s name, at the hospital registry or up to ten days to do so at the town hall registry.

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