THE COLONEL'S LADY...

For the Colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady
are sisters under their skins!

- Rudyard Kipling,  The Ladies

I will not judge in this strange case in the Messinese for we do not know what kind of life the young woman had had or why she felt she had so little choice.  As far as I can ascertain, she is not an immigrant who was forced into prostitution but who knows what hardships or deprivations she had endured?  This is my report for Italy Magazine today:  

A 23-year-old woman has been saved from a life of sexual slavery in Messina [Sicily] because she managed to raise the alarm on the social networking site Facebook. The details, as reported by the online Messina newspaper Tempo Stretto, are as follows:

When she was 20, the woman met a 55-year-old man known as T.O. This man threatened her and forced her into prostitution, taking €30 - 50 from her after each sexual encounter she had with clients. After a while the young woman met a 41-year-old man, known as S.A, who reportedly fell in love with her but was married with three children. When he discovered that she was working as a prostitute, he began mistreating her and took the remaining €20 that she kept after each sexual encounter. The young woman also endured violence at the hands of her clients.

When her landlord threw her out of the house where she was living, S.A introduced her to another man, a 58-year-old known as I.D.  This man offered her a room in his house and this time, the young woman thought she had met someone who would help her. However, she soon found herself a prisoner in the house. While her captor was out she managed to create a profile on Facebook and told a female Facebook contact about her situation. The contact, in turn, alerted a Facebook friend of her own, a policeman from Palermo who alerted colleagues in Messina.

The three men have been arrested.

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 21

Here is my pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

It was the week in which we discovered that the Milanese have the most extramarital affairs in Italy and Mr Berlusconi's love life came under the media spotlight once again as the term bunga bunga entered the Italian language.  The passing of Paul the psychic octopus - who was, of course, Italian and really called Paolo - was mourned and if the CEO of Fiat gets his way Italians will soon also be mourning a national icon.  It wasn't all gloom, however, with Christina Hendricks telling us that living in Italy made her both curvier and sexier whilst a young man from Cervia [Emilia-Romagna] was declared the world's best sommelier. 

Here is a Venetian festival that I would love to attend this month.  How about you?

For my Patti Chiari column, I had the pleasure of inteviewing my friend Giusy Asta, a Modican wedding planner with a difference.  Giusy's shop in Modica Bassa is one of my favourite places here.  Take a look at the article to understand why.

Happy reading.

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 20

Here is my pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

Sicily and Sardinia are popular tourist destinations these days but there is a smaller, quieter island which also has a lot to offer.  Elba is a paradise in many ways and you can find some things to do there in this article.

Our blog of the week was My Paesano, administered by Capri, an Italian American who is passionate about all things Italian.  You'll find lots of travel advice and information on My Paesano too.

Now, ladies, are you looking for a new bra?  This one will set you back a mere $2 million.  Or, if you'd rather spend your money on iPhone apps, this one is for you if you happen to have a church to run!  Meanwhile, a regional council official in Abruzzo has come up with a unique solution to the area's prostitution problem and the Vatican has claimed those two renegades, Bart and Homer Simpson, as its own.

For my Patti Chiari column, I wrote about the elderly in Sicily.  Are the elderly treated well and respected where you are?

Happy reading.

A HAPPY ENDING?

A young woman whose exact age has not been given – but she is definitely a minor – has narrowly escaped a life of slavery of the worst kind.

She arrived on Lampedusa in August, along with a Nigerian couple purporting to be her parents, according to Il Giornale di Sicilia [not available online] today. They had apparently “trained” her in the “arts” of prostitution.

The girl, however, was courageous enough to tell the police the truth and now the couple, who allegedly received $30, 000 for bringing the girl to Europe, have been arrested.

What kind of society, I keep asking myself, can give rise to such brutality? And what had happened to the girl before she began her enforced journey? Did her real parents sell her and if so, what were the circumstances? Or was she stolen from them? May God help them in either case, because they will probably never hear from her again.

We can only hope that she will now receive the care that she needs and deserves and that she will continue to avoid the fate previously in store for her.

A TAXING JOB?

A Milanese prostitute who was unable to explain her affluent lifestyle [she owned six large apartments and two expensive cars] to the satisfaction of the Italian tax authorities has been ordered to pay tax on her income: this sets a precedent and now, in theory, all prostitutes in Italy will have to do so. You can read the whole story here.

Prostitution is tolerated in Italy but exploitation of it is not. In this most Catholic of countires, drive along any major road and you will see the ladies sitting provocatively at the roadside quite openly. As numbers of prostitutes in Italy have increased since the most recent expansion of the EU, the State is now considering fining their clients. Many of the women, from both within and outside the EU, have been “trafficked” into Italy, having been convinced that they were going to bona fide jobs. Then they found themselves having to pay for their journey by working as prostitutes. This law, at least, is an enlightened attempt at a partial solution.

In Britain prostitutes’ organisations have long been campaigning for legalisation, so that their activities would be recognised as “work” and they would therefore pay taxes. Both Ellee and Steven Bainbridge have posted on it , and, like Steven, I find it an issue fraught with difficulties and am not sure where I stand.

The first difficulty is, surely, what exactly is prostitution? What do we call it when someone allows a man or woman to set them up and keep them when there is no love? What is a mistress who accepts material comforts from her lover because she knows he will never offer her marriage? What do we call it when a woman remains in a loveless marriage for economic reasons? Yes, in a marriage there are likely to be other considerations but even so, the line is thin:

“ For the colonel’s lady an' Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins"
wrote Kipling.

Now, I can see the arguments for legalisation and regulation, with health and hygiene issues, protecting the women and getting prostitutes off the streets of residential areas being three of these. But still they have to go somewhere and where would that be? Illegal activity would continue for where there is a business there are surely always those who would try to undercut it. And I’m uneasy with the “People will do it anyway so let’s legalise it” school of thought because that could be applied to anything.

The nineteenth century reformer Josephine Butler’s main objection to regulation was inequality, with the law recognising no fault in the male client; however, she also objected in principle to what, in her eyes, amounted to State sponsorship of immorality. Butler was largely responsible for the repeal of the Contagious Disease Acts in Britain: under these Acts the women were humiliated, subjected to brutal “health” checks and generally treated inhumanely. If there were regulation today, I’m not suggesting that it would be handled so insensitively but I doubt whether all the implications have been thought through.

And yet..… as so often in life, a situation you know of personally can change your thinking or cause you to question it. I have a friend who has a brain-damaged son. Now an adult, he has sexual desires like everybody else. These have sometimes been manifested in disturbing ways. “I’d pay for him to visit a prostitute if there was a way of finding a clean one!” my friend cried to me in desperation after one of these incidents. This, I believe, is an aspect of the matter which few legislators have considered.


One thing I am sure about: I get angry when prostitution is called a “profession” and, although I am more sympathetic than not towards women who feel they have no choice but to ply this trade, they are not feminists and they are not liberated women. For the trafficked women or for those otherwise forced into this way of life, I feel nothing but sorrow and the situation makes me wonder how much has really changed since Josephine Butler’s day.

So: fine the clients / punish those who profit from the activity / punish the prostitutes themselves / legalise and regulate – what do you think?