The judgment reported only those parts of his testimony in which Tavernese described the character of Sollecito during the first period he spent in college, ignoring the fact that in describing Raffaele as a boy “taciturn, introverted, shy…” the witness linked these characteristics with the “understandable initial difficulties in adapting to leaving the family home” (statements Francesco Tavernese, hearing 27.03.2009, p. 130).
But there is more of this. The sentencing report completely ignored particularly significant passages from the witness statement. In fact, in the course of his testimony Tavernese described Raffaele as a boy who “has, in our opinion, had a good developmental path since he came to us (…) and came to us in one way and left in another, in the sense that he left as a more open boy, as a more communicative boy than we saw on entrance and a boy who socialized well on his floor, a boy accepted by that portion of the community with whom in practice he spent his days” (declarations Francesco Tavernese, hearing 27.3.2009, p. 139).
The judgment also emphasized the viewing of a porn film which was instead considered irrelevant by Tavernese: “...we saw it as something of a casual character, extemporaneous, that is we connected it more to curiosity than anything else (…) in the male community the viewing of such films happens (…) we found only one copy (…) and we were not, I repeat, in a series of checks then effected in the absence of Raffaele, able to find anything [else], thus we have in some way… have concluded in some way that it was a curiosity of the moment” (declarations Francesco Tavernese, hearing 27.3.2009, pages 130 and 139).
