TIVOLI - A teenage girl who killed her father while attempting to defend her mother and maternal grandmother from his aggressive behaviour has been released, police sources have said.

 Deborah Sciacquatori, 19, was arrested earlier this month after she was found to have stabbed her father to death in a domestic struggle. However, she has been released after Italian courts found her to have acted in self-defence, and presiding judges are expected to ask for all charges to be dropped, although this is yet to be confirmed.

 Sciacquatori’s father is alleged to have returned home inebriated early one morning before lashing out at his family, a regular occurrence according to family members. The man is said to have yelled at his wife and daughter and physically abused the former. When the two women attempted to leave the house alongside Sciacquatori’s grandmother, her father followed them, continuing to abuse the women.

 It was at this point that Deborah, who had been trying to diffuse the situation, fatally wounded her father. “I had tried to stop him, but had not been able to. I never wanted to kill him,” Sciacquatori told courts earlier this week. "Please don't leave me, I love you," investigators found she said to her father after her fatal intervention. 

 Some criticism has fallen on state institutions for not sufficiently protecting the two women from Sciacquatori’s father, who had been denounced by his wife for aggression in 2014. Responsibility for stopping him, the judge proclaimed, should not fall on the shoulders of a 19-year-old student or those of a mother afraid that doing so would see her daughter taken away.

 The incident follows the passing of a reformed version of Italy’s self-defence law, championed by deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, which gave individual’s greater agency to defend themselves from situations of imminent danger when authorities cannot be reached in time.

ea