Italian leader Giorgia Meloni has split from her TV presenter boyfriend after he was recorded making lewd remarks to a female colleague.
The 46-year-old prime minister announced on Instagram her separation from Andrea Giambruno, her partner of ten years and the father of their seven-year-old daughter Geneva.
She wrote: “Our relationship, which lasted almost ten years, ends here. Our paths have diverged for some time, and the time has come to acknowledge it.”
Giambruno, 42, is a high-profile presenter on the current affairs show Diario del Giorno, part of the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset broadcasting network.
In a series of backstage recordings aired this week on Striscia, a satirical show also owned by Mediaset, Giambruno was heard propositioning a female colleague and making crude, sexist remarks.
In one clip, he approaches the colleague, who has not been named, and asks her: “Can I touch my b**** while I talk to you?”
Sounding annoyed, she replies: “You already have.” He continues: “You are a very intelligent woman, but why didn’t I meet you before? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Later, he tells the woman that he and another colleague are having an affair. “All of Mediaset knows it, now you too, but we are looking for a third participant because we do threesomes, even foursomes,” he says.
Asked if she wants to join his “team”, the woman says “Is there an aptitude test?” and Giambruno replies “Yes, we have to f***.” A male colleague is heard challenging Giambruno over his comments, saying: “If Striscia records you, you’ll have to watch out.”
Giambruno replies: “But what have I said? We’re laughing and joking. We’ve just come out of the pandemic.”
In September, Giambruno was widely criticised for telling young women they should “avoid getting drunk” if they don’t want to be raped.
He made the remarks on air during a discussion about a series of gang rapes in Palermo and near Naples, which dominated Italian headlines this summer.
Describing rapists as “wolves”, he said: “If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk. But if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems, because then you find the wolf.”
At the time, Ms Meloni defended her partner, saying his words had been misinterpreted. She said that his advice was similar to what her mother had told her, which was to “keep your eyes peeled and your head screwed on”.
But the comments were condemned as “victim shaming” by women’s rights groups and politicians. Chiara Gribaudo MP said Giambruno “forgets to tell men – who are the only guilty parties – to avoid raping”.
Chiara Appendino MP added: ‘We have the first female prime minister in history, who claims to be fighting hard against sexual violence and presents herself as a woman, mother and Christian.
“She must distance herself from the very serious claims made by her partner.”
Striscia had released other recordings in which Giambruno swears, praises a studio colleague for her dress sense and her intelligence and pats her on the head. Its latest set of backstage clips were aired on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Two days later, Ms Meloni announced they were separating. In her full statement, she wrote of Giambruno: “I thank him for the wonderful years we spent together, for the difficulties we went through, and for giving me the most important thing in my life, which is our daughter Geneva.
“I will defend who we were, I will defend our friendship, and I will defend, at all costs, a seven-year-old who loves her mother and father, the way I could not love mine. I have nothing more to say about this.
“PS: all those who hoped to weaken me by hitting me at home should know that as much as a drop can erode a stone, the stone remains a stone and the drop is just water.”
Ms Meloni had previously described Giambruno as a “fantastic” father who would happily step in to care for their daughter if she was working.
He described their initial encounter – in a Mediaset studio – as “love at first sight”. She came to power last October after her Right-wing Brothers of Italy party triumphed in general elections.
She was brought up by a single mother and was estranged from her father.