SPOKE TOO FRANKLY

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 13

SPOKE TOO FRANKLY

(N.Z P A.-Reuter— Copyright) MILAN, March 24. Three thousand Italian students, professors and schoolteachers staged a rally through Milan last night protesting against the trial of three young students for talking too frankly about sex life in their co-ed school. The students—two boys and a girl, all aged 17—go on trial on March 3 charged with publishing material for

adolescents likely to “offend their moral sentiments or to constitute incitement to corruption.” The three, Marco Poli, Marco Sassano, and attractive Claudia Beltramo Ceppi, gave frank interviews on sex with fellow students in their grammar school magazine, “La Zanzara” (The Mosquito). The school headmaster, Professor Daniel Mattalia, will stand trial, too. Fascist Regulations

Italy is in a storm over the case and the Government is facing questions in Parliament because an investigating magistrate, invoking a regulation going back to Fascist times, ordered the students to

strip for medical examinations. The two boys stripped but Claudia refused. Speakers at last night’s protest rally called for greater freedom of expression and freedom for students' associations. Students from other schools claimed that their school magazines were subjected to strict censorship. Mr Oronzo Reale, the Italian Justice Minister, who has been asked by the Italian Magistrates* Association to open a ministerial inquiry into the case, said he would answer questions on the case tabled in Parliament after the trial.