The video and audio clips launched by Italian news agency Mediaset after which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni severed her decade-old relationship with partner and journalist Andrea Giambruno shows the latter propositioning female colleagues to have group sex.
“Do you know that (name not mentioned) and I are having an affair? All of Mediaset knows it and now you do too… But we’re looking for a third person, as we do threesomes. Foursomes too. Would you like to be part of our working group?” Andrea Giambruno is heard saying in the audio clip.
The leaked video clip shows Giambruno openly flirting with and touching a female colleague.
Giorgia Meloni earlier this week announced that she and the television journalist are separating. She has distanced herself from the comments made by Giambruno.
Giambruno is also seen touching his genital areas during his conversation with the female colleagues.
“Why didn’t I meet you before?”, he asks the woman.
Meloni has told media outlets that she should not be judged because of Giambruno’s remarks and actions and said she will not answer questions in the future which are related to his behaviour.
“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost 10 years, ends here. (I thank him for) the splendid years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through, and for giving me the most important thing in my life, our daughter Ginevra,” Meloni said on social media.
Economist Azzurra Rinaldi, director of the La Sapienza University’s School of Gender Economics told the Financial Times that even though Meloni heads a right-wing government which in certain occasions may find itself in certain issues related to women’s rights, she gained the sympathy of women from across the political spectrum, even though they might not vote for her.
However, men who supported her may feel she overreacted.
“After those videos, it was very hard for her not to do something. It was too disrespectful — not something you can accept. She had no other option. Many women are empathising with her — including women that will never vote for her. But among men who are most of her voters, it’s going to harm her. Those kind of men behaved like that their whole lives — and they think she overreacted,” Rinaldi was quoted as saying by the Financial Times.
