It is nearly a decade since Italy’s top appeals court caused a furore by ruling that a woman wearing tight jeans cannot by definition be raped or sexually molested because the removal of the garment requires her“collaboration and consent”.

Yesterday the judges of the Court of Cassation reversed the ruling, with Italian feminists welcoming the belated change of heart to a chorus of “and about time too”.

The ruling came after the conviction by a court in Padua in May 2005 of a 37-year-old man who was accused of sexually molesting his partner’s 16-year-old daughter from a previous relationship by “inserting his hands inside the front of her jeans”. The sentence was upheld by the regional appeals court in Venice in October.

The man, identified only by the initials RP under Italian privacy laws, appealed to the Court of Cassation, citing its landmark 1999 ruling and claiming that he could not have committed the alleged acts against the will of the girl because her jeans were too tight. However the court upheld the one-year jail sentence given to the man for sexual assault, ruling that “jeans cannot be compared to any type of chastity belt”.

The defendant had claimed that because the jeans were so tight the girl had unbuttoned them to allow him to fondle her and in doing so had consented to his sexual advances. The girl complained to her father and her boyfriend, who went to the police.

The 1999 ruling overturned the conviction of a 45-year-old driving instructor from Potenza who was accused of raping an 18-year-old client. The view of the appeal court judges that the victim must have collaborated because her jeans were too tight caused uproar among Italian feminists. Women deputies — led by Alessandra Mussolini, the far-right politician and granddaughter of the Italian Fascist dictator, and Stefania Prestigiacomo, now the Environment Minister in the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi — wore jeans to parliament as a protest.

Yesterday Ms Mussolini said that she was pleased with the latest verdict but said she regretted that it had “taken until 2008 for the Court of Cassation to acknowledge an obvious fact — that women’s clothing has nothing to do with the violence to which they are forced to submit on a daily basis”.

Maria Gabriella Moscatelli, who runs Telefona Rosa, a helpline for women seeking legal advice, emo- tional support or refuge from domestic violence, said: “Finally we have justice, with a sentence which respects the rights of all women. It shows that when civil society, politicians and pressure groups mobilise themselves the law has no choice but to be on their side.”

The Court of Cassation, which is staffed mainly by elderly male appeal judges, has issued several controversial judgments on sexual and social mores in the past decade. It has, however, been increasingly aware of women’s rights, issuing rulings on previously accepted acts of sexual harrassment such as bottom pinching.

In March the Cassation judges went so far as to rule that a mistress may lie under oath without committing perjury to protect her honour, clearing a 48-year-old woman from Porto Ercole who had been convicted by a lower court of giving false testimony to police. In February the court ruled that men who touched their genitals in public were committing a criminal offence. Under an age-old custom Italian men sometimes grasp their crotches as a protection against bad luck and the evil eye, for example if a funeral procession passes by.

The judges, however, upheld a lower court sentencing of a 42-year-old workman from Como for indecent behaviour after he had “ostentatiously touched his genitals through his clothing”. They ordered the man to pay a fine of €200 (£159) and €1,000 in costs, rejecting the defence by his lawyer that he was only “adjusting his overalls”.

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