Court asks man to buy books for under-age prostitute

September 24, 2016 11:16 pm | Updated November 01, 2016 08:43 pm IST - Rome:

The man, found guilty of being client of the sex worker, has also been given a two-year jail sentence

Among the books, the person was asked to buy were those written by AnneFrank, the German-born teenage writer who died in a Nazi concentration camp; and British writer Virginia Woolf.

Among the books, the person was asked to buy were those written by AnneFrank, the German-born teenage writer who died in a Nazi concentration camp; and British writer Virginia Woolf.

A court in Rome has handed down an unusual penalty to the client of an under-age prostitute, ordering him to buy her 30 books on the theme of women’s dignity, Italian media reported on Friday.

In addition to a two-year jail sentence, the unnamed man (35) will be required to give the 15-year-old victim works including novels by Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank’s Diary and the poems of Emily Dickinson, as well as two feminist-themed films.

Judge Paola Di Nicola’s ruling follows an investigation launched in 2013 into a Rome-based prostitution ring that pimped two girls, aged 14 and 15, in the upmarket Parioli suburb of the Italian capital.

The teenagers were lured into the world of sex work with cash which they used to “buy new clothes and the latest mobile phones”, reports said, citing investigators. In the 2014 trial of the sex ring’s mastermind, who was ultimately jailed for nine years, a judge said the girls were “children who got carried away with the debauchery, without restraint, so they could easily earn money”. A copy of the latest court ruling was not available on Friday. “But the decision suggests that the judge favoured a remedy that would help the young girl to understand the real ‘damage’ that she had suffered was damage to her dignity as a woman,” wrote the Corriere della Sera daily.

Adriana Cavarero, whose Notwithstanding Plato was among the books that the judge ordered the accused to buy for the girl, told the newspaper it would be better if the judge had read the works to the convicted man.

“Adolescence is not the time for reflection, what he did was much worse: an adult who, knowingly, paid for sex with a minor,” said Ms. Cavarero, a philosophy professor at Verona university.

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