According to Barbara Saltamartini, the party’s equal opportunities spokeswoman, Silvio Berlusconi’s government "has reached a further milestone"! The Italian prime minister yesterday chaired a meeting that … wait for it … approved a bill outlawing prostitution.
Mara Carfagna (above), the former topless model who is Berlusconi's equal opportunities minister, told the website Clandestinoweb a package of security measures will now go to parliament that included a ban on prostitution in all public places. "The aim is to cut off the oxygen to criminal organisations that profit from the bodies of women who are often very young and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, foreign," she said.
It emerged last week that three associates of the prime minister were formally under investigation on suspicion of profiting from prostitution. They include his TV network's best-known newscaster, a talent scout who supplies many of its showgirls, and a former dancer who was Berlusconi's dental hygienist until he plucked her from obscurity to be a regional MP for his Freedom People movement. I’m not making this shit up!
Among those who have been questioned is an 18 year-old Moroccan girl who said that she had visited the prime minister's home outside Milan. She has acknowledged receiving €7,000 from Berlusconi, but denies any sexual involvement with him. A 27 year-old ex-prostitute who has also given a statement to prosecutors, said however that she had twice provided sexual services for the prime minister at €5,000 a time. Opposition critics noted the new measures would not apply to call girls, but only to streetwalkers.
"If it weren't so terribly serious, you'd die laughing", said Senator Donatella Poretti of the Italian Radicals.
