Italian TV presenter Andrea Giambruno under fire for safety comments (Image: Getty)

       Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's husband is embroiled in a row after he made an outrageous statement suggesting that young women who go out at night and drink too much put themselves at risk of sexual assault.

       Andrea Giambruno, a TV presenter who has kept a low profile since Ms Meloni took office last October, has been accused of victim-blaming.

       This row has attracted a lot of negative attention in Italy, making it to the front pages of major Italian newspapers on Wednesday.

       Mr Giambruno, 42, who is married to the prime minister and has a six-year-old daughter, made the remarks in response to a number of distressing sexual assaults and group rapes against women in Italy this summer.

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       Mr Giambruno said on an episode of Diario del giorno on Monday night: "If you go out dancing, you have every right to get drunk – there should be no kind of misunderstanding or impediment to this.

       "But if you can avoid getting drunk and losing consciousness, maybe you will avoid ending up in serious situations in which the wolf will find you."

       The TV host has responded to the outcry that met the remarks by arguing his statements had been misread and that he was perplexed by the subsequent debate, which he described as "surreal."

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       He emphasised that he had clearly defined rape as "deporable" and perpetrators as "beast."

       Mr Giambruno told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper: "I certainly never said that it is legitimate for men to rape women who are drunk."

       During the broadcast of Mr Giambruno's TV programme, the debate centred on a number of recent rape and homicide cases.

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       These included the alleged gang rape of a 19-year-old woman by seven men in Palermo, Sicily, during the time of his statements.

       A group of teenage boys agesd11 to 19 have been accused of sexually assaulting two girls aged 12 and 13 in a town near Naples known for its high crime rate.

       These cousins were subjected to multiple assaults, which were recorded on film by the attackers using their cellphones.

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