Man to be tried 18 years after daughter’s suicide

Palermo (Italy), Nov 25 (IANS/AKI) A Sicilian man will be put on trial for driving his 14-year-old daughter to suicide 18 years after she jumped to her death from the seventh floor of a building.

Michele Mercurio, 53, faces prison for allegedly abusing his daughter Ivana by threatening her with a knife while drunk and accusing her of being pregnant, according to a report published Wednesday by newspaper Giornale di Sicilia.

It was Ivana’s younger sister - who was three years old at the time of the alleged crime - who raised the possibility of her father’s part in the suicide.

It was a 1997 school assignment in which she wrote that her sister “flew because she was running from daddy” that prompted a teacher to notify police.

Prosecutors suspected that Ivana’s father and mother abused her sexually but lacked proof.

The investigation was reopened in 2002 after the Ivana’s older brother and mother described to investigators the events that allegedly led up to the teenager’s suicide.

–IANS/AKI