Rome (CNN) Hundreds of demonstrators protested outside an Italian court this week after it emerged that two men were acquitted of rape partly because the judges believed the alleged victim looked too "masculine."

In 2016, the two Peruvian men were convicted of raping a woman in the Italian city of Ancona in 2015.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was 20 years old at the time of the alleged attack and is also of Peruvian origin.

The ruling was subsequently thrown out by the Ancona appeals court, with the judges -- three women -- claiming that the woman's report was not credible, despite doctors confirming that her injuries were consistent with rape.

"It's a sentence that has shocked us, I was astonished when reading the motivation," Cinzia Molinaro, the woman's lawyer, told CNN.

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