The Times - UK (2020-10-15)

the times | Thursday October 15 2020 2GM 31

Wo r l d

An office worker who feared being

sacked has been jailed for drugging a

colleague’s coffee in the hope that she

would fall asleep at work and be fired.

Mariangela Cerrato, 53, dreamt up

the scheme when rumours spread of

staff cuts at her insurance company in

Bra, northern Italy.

Cerrato feared the sack because her

responsibilities overlapped with those

Office worker spiked colleague’s cappuccino to get her sacked

of her victim. Entrusted with the daily

task of bringing coffees into the office

from a café, Cerrato dosed her victim’s

cappuccino with benzodiazepine, a

drug used to reduce anxiety, over the

course of nine months.

“The drug induces fatigue, head-

aches, dizziness and muscular pain and

my client’s work rate slowed after she

drank the cappuccinos,” Cristiano Bur-

dese, the lawyer for the female victim

told La Stampa newspaper.

The woman, whose identity has not

been revealed, realised that something

was wrong after leaving the office and

driving into a tree. She consulted

doctors but they found nothing wrong

with her.

She suspected that her cappuccino

was to blame because her symptoms

vanished when she took time off work.

On her return to work, the victim

stopped taking a cappuccino in the

morning for a month, and continued to

feel better, despite Cerrato urging her

to start drinking coffee again. “Come

on, I will bring you a cappuccino, what

harm can it do you?” Cerrato is alleged

to have said.

As her suspicions grew, the victim

accepted Cerrato’s offer but kept a sam-

ple for testing and discovered the coffee

contained an “extremely high” dose of

benzodiazepine.

After alerting police, officers secretly

filmed Cerrato putting powder in the

victim’s coffee.

Cerrato denied drugging the coffee

and is set to appeal against the four-

year jail term. “Our client is extremely

worried by this serious sentence,”

Alberto Pantosti, her lawyer, said. “She

has always denied the accusation and

cannot understand how this absurd

story is ruining her life.”

During the trial, the manager of the

insurance company said that in 2017,

when the alleged drugging of the coffee

began, there was no plan by manage-

ment to cut staff.

The company was actually hoping to

hire new employees, he said.

Italy

Tom Kington Rome

Princeton University has agreed to

spend nearly $1 million on back pay for

female professors after the US Depart-

ment of Labor alleged that they were

paid less than their male counterparts.

The university will spend a further

$250,000 to adjust the future salaries of

female professors. It said an investi-

gation had revealed pay disparities for

106 women between 2012 and 2014.

Princeton said it had agreed to make

the payments, without admitting any

wrongdoing, to avoid costly litigation. A

spokesman said the allegations were

“based on a flawed statistical model

Princeton hands over $1m to

underpaid female professors

that grouped all full professors together

regardless of department and thus bore

no resemblance to how the university

actually hires, evaluates and compen-

sates its faculty.”

He added: “In other words, a profes-

sor of English cannot perform the

duties of a professor in the physics

department, and vice versa.” He said an

internal analysis conducted by the

university found “no meaningful pay

disparities based on gender”.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

said the average salary for professors at

Princeton was $248,252 in 2018-19.

Men were paid $252,805 on average,

while women earned $234,593.

Will Pavia

When Brianna Hill felt herself going

into labour she did not move from her

chair. It was the first day of the Bar

examination, the two-day ordeal all

legal graduates must endure before

they can begin practising law. If she

moved she might well be disqualified.

So Ms Hill, 28, from Chicago, com-

pleted the 90-minute paper. She fin-

ished the second test while suffering

contractions. Then her husband drove

her to hospital where she gave birth to

a son, Cassius, held him, nursed him,

slept and rose again in the morning,

handing the infant to her husband and

closeting herself in an adjacent hospital

room to take the two final tests.

Fellow law students have questioned

the severe rules that forced her to carry

on with her test, even when she was

about to give birth. One thought she

might have been disqualified because

she got her period in

the middle of the

exam; others were

said to have urinated

in their seats or worn

a nappy.

The Bar exam is

held twice a year.

New graduates such

as Ms Hill were sup-

posed to take the test

in July, but it was post-

poned in some states

US law student

gives birth in

middle of exam

because of the pandemic. In Illinois it

was rescheduled for two days in Octo-

ber and turned into a test that students

would take online. To ensure they did

not cheat, students were not allowed to

move out of sight of their laptop’s

camera.

Ms Hill had calculated that the res-

cheduled exam would fall two weeks

before her due date and emailed exam

administrators asking for additional

breaks to visit the lavatory, she told The

New York Times. She said the request

was declined. Then, during the first test

of the examination, she felt something.

“I thought, ‘Really hope my water did

not just break,’ ” she said. When she fin-

ished the 90-minute test she stood, and

realised that her waters had. There was

a scheduled half-hour break before the

next test. “I took my break, got myself

cleaned up, called my husband, mid-

wife and mom, cried because I was a lit-

tle panicked, then sat down to take the

second part because my midwife told

me I had time before I

needed to go to the hospi-

tal,” she told CNN. She got

there at 5.30pm and gave

birth at 10pm.

“The whole time my

husband and I were talking

about how we wanted me

to finish the test and my

midwife and nurses were

so on board,” she said.

They found her an empty

room where she set up her

laptop.

She will have to wait

until December to find

out whether she passed.

United States

Will Pavia New York

A

statue of

Medusa

holding the

severed head

of Perseus has

been erected outside the

New York court where

Harvey Weinstein was

convicted of rape (Will

Pavia writes).

Admirers of the

monument Medusa with

the Head of Perseus say it

is a “new icon of justice

for the modern age”.

Yet days after it was

placed in the park across

the street from the

Manhattan criminal

court it has been

criticised by survivors of

rape, who said that it

offered a “revenge

fantasy” that wrongly

cast victims of sexual

violence as aggressors.

There were also those

who felt that the artist

had made Medusa look

like a “hot and hairless”

swimsuit model.

Luciano Garbati, an

Argentinian with Italian

roots, made the statue in

2008 as a response to

Benvenuto Cellini’s

bronze sculpture of

Perseus with the head of

Medusa, which stands in

Florence.

In 2018 he posted a

photograph of the piece

on his Instagram page

and the image was widely

shared.

In Greek mythology,

in his shield, he cuts it off.

Andersen said Garbati’s

Medusa “draws you in,

then quickly flips

everything you know

upside down”. She called

him in Buenos Aires and

they arranged to exhibit

it in New York.

Its placement at the

court, however, angered

survivors of sexual

assault.

Ana Mardoll, a writer,

tweeted: “The most

popular and comfortable

way that our society

engages with the reality

of rape is with ‘revenge’

narratives. I goddamn

hate that this is being

installed outside a

courthouse. I am a rape

survivor. I do not want a

sword.”

Medusa the avenger

angers rape survivors

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS; ALAMY

The statue has appeared

outside the New York court

where Harvey Weinstein

was convicted

UTERS; ALAMY

Medusa was a beautiful

maiden in the temple of

Athena who was raped by

Poseidon. Then she was

punished by Athena, who

gave her snakes for hair

and a face so hideous that

any man who looked at

her was turned to stone.

“In some versions she is

punished for being

beautiful,” said Bek

Andersen, a New York-

based photographer who

was captivated by

Garbati’s Instagram post.

“In other versions it’s

because she was raped in

the temple and that

desecrated the space.

Either way what that

message carries is that if

you are beautiful you are

damned and if you are

raped you are damned.”

A king then asks the

hero Perseus to bring

him her severed head.

Approaching her by

staring at her reflection

n

ta

th

b

h

a

to

m

so

T

ro

la

u

o

Brianna Hill, 28, and

Cassius. She carried on

the exam the next day