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PROSTITUTION

Italy orders man to buy feminist books for prostitute

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

Italy orders man to buy feminist books for prostitute
An image of a customer meeting a prostitute. Photo: Italian investigators
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 Cavarero, a philosophy professor at Verona university.

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PROSTITUTION

Spain’s top court reinstates first sex workers’ union

Spanish sex workers have the right to form their own union, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, overturning an earlier court decision ordering the dissolution of Spain's first such labour organisation.

Spain's top court reinstates first sex workers' union
Photo: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Known as OTRAS (or “the Sex Workers’ Organisation”), the union was discretely set up in August 2018 but was closed three months later by order of the National Court following an appeal by the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

But following an appeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of OTRAS, saying that its statutes, which had triggered the initial legal challenge, were “in line with the law” and that sex workers “have the fundamental right to freedom of association and the right to form a union”.

In its November 2018 ruling, the National Court had argued that allowing the union to exist amounted to “recognising the act of procurement as lawful”.

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Contacted by AFP, the union did not wish to comment.

When it was founded, OTRAS received the green light from the labour ministry and its statutes were publicly registered in the official gazette the day before the government went into a summer recess.

But three weeks later, the government — which portrays itself as “feminist and in favour of the abolition of prostitution” according to Sanchez’s Twitter feed at the time — started legal moves against it.

In Spain, prostitution is neither legal nor illegal but it is tolerated.

Although it is not recognised as employment, there is a large number of licensed brothels throughout the country.

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