Local leaders remain committed to welcoming migrants.

A Bangladeshi asylum seeker has been detained on charges of raping and impregnating a 10-year-old girl at a migrant reception centre in Italy. The 28-year-old suspect is accused of aggravated sexual assault following an attack in the town of San Colombano di Collio in Brescia. The assault was reported to the authorities on 1 October by the child’s mother, who noticed a drastic change in her daughter’s behaviour. According to QuiBrescia, the accused befriended the mother and the victim, both migrants, who were staying in the institution housing around 20 migrants.

The man was reportedly in tears at the first court hearing, but remained silent throughout the proceedings. The child and her mother have since been transferred to a shelter in Lower Brescia, where the child is receiving psychological support from a team of professionals.

Local media confirmed that the girl had undergone an abortion following the attack, Remix News reports. The authorities are now investigating the migrant centre, which was previously at the centre of protests in 2015 when locals opposed the housing of migrants in the former Hotel Il Cacciatore. However, the outcry of area residents fell on deaf ears and the local authorities approved the placement of the migrants.

Despite the attack, some local leaders insist that relations between migrants and residents are positive and describe the atmosphere in the village as peaceful.

„This has nothing to do with the migrants, we get on very well with them.”

– said Don Battista Dass, the local parish priest. Giovanni Cantoni, the manager of the migrant reception centre, also defended its residents.

But local mayor Mirella Zanini struck a different tone. „The migrants received here have no intention of integrating,” she said.