Perth restaurant owner on trial for sexual assault and rape
Como restaurant owner Alberto Nicoletti and his friend Vincenzo Mineo are currently on trial for sexual assault.
It is alleged Nicoletti assaulted and raped several Perth women over a 4½-year period, with the court hearing Nicoletti and his friend allegedly tricked a woman into believing they were gay before leading them into a bathroom to take cocaine and raping her.
The assaults of eight women are said to have occurred between 2016 and 2021.
In another case from 2018, it is alleged Nicoletti pretended to be an Uber driver, before picking up a woman outside the Hip-E club in Leederville, taking her to his apartment against his will and sexually assaulting her.
The woman managed to escape the apartment without her purse or shoes.
Another incident allegedly occurred in 2016 at Nicoletti’s Como restaurant, Lago Di Como, where he allegedly assaulted a woman in the car park.
Additionally, he is accused of raping a married woman after she and her husband were invited to his apartment.
Mineo is currently on trial for two of these incidents. However, Nicoletti's defense attorney, Tom Percy KC, informed the jury that his client does not dispute having contact with seven of the eight alleged victims. He contends that in some instances, the encounters were consensual, while in others, there was no sexual contact at all.
“Mr Nicoletti was a young, single man,” he said.
“He was good-looking and had a successful restaurant business. He was attractive to young women and not, by any means, averse to casual consensual sexual encounters.”
Percy argued there was no criminality in Nicoletti’s promiscuity.
“Some of the women had, at the time, as you will hear, been drinking,” Percy said.
“As had he. And while there may well come a time when a state of intoxication may have a serious bearing on someone’s ability to truly consent, that was, we say, never a factor in relation to any one of the incidents that you will hear about in this case.”
The men have pleaded not guilty.
Jonathan Jackson, 8th February 2024
