Hey, he's Italian, it's compulsory...

[Gob]

Silvio Berlusconi faces Ruby sex charge trial in April

Mr Berlusconi denies paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug when she was 17

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has been indicted to stand trial on charges of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute and abuse of power.

Examining judge Cristina Di Censo said the process would start on 6 April, after prosecutors in Milan asked for an immediate trial.

Mr Berlusconi denies paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug when she was 17.

He also rejects claims that he abused his power by seeking her release when she was detained in another case.

He has called the accusations "groundless" and dismissed the case as a farce.

Mr Berlusconi does, however, acknowledge that he called the police while she was being held on suspicion of theft.

He said he was doing a favour for the then-Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, because Mr Berlusconi was told the girl was Mr Mubarak's granddaughter.

Ms Mahroug, widely known as Ruby and now aged 18, has denied sleeping with the prime minister but has said she received 7,000 euros (£5,900, $9,400) from him as a gift after one of his parties.

It has all the potential to be Italy's trial of the century. But it's not yet clear if the main attraction will be present.

Although Silvio Berlusconi, in effect, lost his immunity from prosecution last month, Italian law means he doesn't have to appear in court in person.

In all the trials involving his financial affairs, most Italians can only remember one occasion where Mr Berlusconi turned up himself.

The prime minister's lawyers know that any personal appearance by their defendant would become the media circus of all circuses and they might not want their man to become an unwilling ringmaster.

Experts I've spoken to say all legal avenues to block any trial have now been exhausted and that the case will go ahead.

Whether that would turn Mr Berlusconi into a lame duck prime minister, forced to devote all his time to clearing his name, is probably an exaggerated reading of what might happen.

But with three other trials relating to his financial dealings also about to re-start, defending, not ruling, might become Silvio Berlusconi's daytime job.

On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Italian women held nationwide protests against their embattled prime minister in more than 60 towns and cities across Italy and overseas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12083491

And who can blame him...

[Scooter]

I've been hearing a lot about this case, since I've been at my mother's for the past couple of months and she subscribes to Italian TV channels - it amazes me that millions of Italians still support the guy. I don't know whether they really believe the claim that he's being targetted by a "leftist" judiciary working in concert with his political opposition, or whether they know he has committed crimes and simply don't care. And not just about the sex scandal aspect - he has had legal problems going on for many years now and his response has consistently been to propose some change to the law to get himself off the hook, whether it be to grant himself and a select few political officials immunity from criminal prosecution while in office, or new restrictions on wiretapping, or trying to impose (effectively retroactively) limits on the length of criminal trials.

And the way that members of his political party are willing to debase themselves by repeating the ridiculous excuses he proffers for his actions makes one despair. MPs getting up in parliament with hand on heart to swear that he got one of his whores sprung from jail because he believed her to be the niece of Hosni Mubarak, and wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident (of course, one wonders why he would have seen fit to entrust Mubarak's niece into the care of a Brazilian prostitute, but I digress...)

And anyone who thinks their own country's press is biased should count their blessings they don't live in Italy. The degree to which Berlusconi-owned or allied media outlets are dancing to his tune throughout this affair is nothing short of obscene. And it may get worse - because he is getting annoyed with having his dirty laundry being aired on TV night after night, his party is proposing a new broadcasting code that would prohibit news magazine-type shows from discussing the same topic more than once per week per network.

[liberty]

Hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites; this is Europe where people are not narrow minded religious sex bigots. So what if he is a fossil and she is a young and beautiful woman. His money makes him irresistibly sexy to the young women. Didn’t you know that money and power are two of the greatest aphrodisiacs What does it matter if she was seventeen, it is about sex. It is disgusting that a seventeen year old woman can’t do what she wants with here own body. It would not matter if she was his intern; it is about sex. Why are you so upset about it; why do you care if the old man has a great sex life? You are not an age bigot, are you?



Sorry I couldn’t help myself; the devil made me do it.

[Scooter]

Is this some lame attempt to compare this to the Clinton saga? Clinton was impeached for far less.

[rubato]

Hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites; this is Europe where people are not narrow minded religious sex bigots. So what if he is a fossil and she is a young and beautiful woman. His money makes him irresistibly sexy to the young women. Didn’t you know that money and power are two of the greatest aphrodisiacs What does it matter if she was seventeen, it is about sex. It is disgusting that a seventeen year old woman can’t do what she wants with here own body. It would not matter if she was his intern; it is about sex. Why are you so upset about it; why do you care if the old man has a great sex life? You are not an age bigot, are you?



Sorry I couldn’t help myself; the devil made me do it.

Paying an underage uneducated girl for sex and then paying her again to keep quiet about it is recognizably different from consensual sex with a college-educated young professional woman many years past the age of consent.

Attempting to make the facts resemble your prejudices distorts your ability to understand.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

The very focussed response of Italian women to this scandal has been very heartening.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Paying an underage uneducated girl for sex and then paying her again to keep quiet about it is recognizably different from consensual sex with a college-educated young professional woman many years past the age of consent.

Is 17 really below the age of consent in Italy? It's not like he diddled an 8 year old. I thought only Americans were so provincial. And who says she was uneducated?

Now the abuse of power aspect would upset me, but not sex with a 17 year old. Indeed she looks well into her 20s in the photo.

[Scooter]

Paying for sex with a person under the age of majority is a crime in Italy. (It is in Canada as well, even though prostiitution per se is legal here. I would have imagined that since prostitution itself is illegal in the most of the U.S., the fact that she was underage would be moot.)

[Big RR]

Perhaps, but until recently other acts like sodomy (even between consenting adults) were also illegal in the US. I'm not saying he deserves a pass if it is, indeed, illegal; only that I'm realy not going to get al that upset about it. Abuse of power, absolutely; but I really don't care if he chooses to pay for sex or not, or if he has sex with a consenting 17 year old.

[Scooter]

I think that most people who are upset about it aren't particularly concerned about that aspect of it; it's how far he is willing to go to undermine the entire policing/judicial apparatus of the state in order to evade criminal prosecution for his own acts that is causing the most concern, as well as the way he has been using his office to reward his whores "companions". If he gets his way, the ability of police to investigate and of overburdened courts to try serious organized crime and terrorist activity will be severely compromised. And for what? To, as one of his whores "companions" put it in a wiretapped phone call, "protect his flaccid dick"?

[liberty]

It does not matter what the law is there; we narrow minded barbarians don’t care. They can permit public bestiality and buggerry (sp) for all it matter to us. We only want to be left along to govern ourselves as we see fit. But hypocrisy always deserves a little snicker.

[Scooter]

what the hell, i've got nothing but time these days


Care to explain where the "hypocrisy" is?

[Big RR]

My guess is that it has something to do with Clinton; with liberty it always does.

[Scooter]

Oh, I see. Because Clinton had sex and Berlusconi had sex, the charges against each must be of equal validity and so either both are innocent or both are guilty.

Got it, thanks for clearing that up.

[liberty]

Paying an underage uneducated girl for sex and then paying her again to keep quiet about it is recognizably different from consensual sex with a college-educated young professional woman many years past the age of consent.

Is 17 really below the age of consent in Italy? It's not like he diddled an 8 year old. I thought only Americans were so provincial. And who says she was uneducated?

Now the abuse of power aspect would upset me, but not sex with a 17 year old. Indeed she looks well into her 20s in the photo.

You are right Mr. Big the eighteen year old age of majority is purely arbitrary. It could be just as easily be seventeen or nineteen.

Perhaps this is a subject for another thread, but we have some hypocrisy of our own. An eighteen year old American is a citizen due to the fact the Constitution established their right to vote. But an eighteen is not allowed to purchase and drink alcohol. What right does one group of citizens have to tell another group of citizens what legal activities they can engage in. If eighteen is to young to be a citizen then the age should be moved move back to twenty one. But we should not have second class citizens.

[Scooter]

And, of course, citizens in certain parts of the country are discriminated against because it is illegal for them to marry their sisters...

[Andrew D]

An eighteen year old American is a citizen due to the fact the Constitution established their right to vote.

Actually, with certain exceptions,* a person born in the U.S. is a citizen from the moment of her or his birth. A person naturalized in the U.S. is a citizen from the moment of naturalization, regardless of the person's age. (See U.S. Const., Amdt. XIV, Sec. 1.)

On the other hand, in most U.S. jurisdictions, convicted felons are not allowed to vote, at least while they are imprisoned. But they remain (if they already were) U.S. citizens.

I agree that allowing people to vote but not to consume alcohol is stupidity. And subjecting people to military conscription (when there is a draft) while still not allowing them to consume alcohol is worse than mere stupidity. You can be forced to risk death for your country (or be imprisoned for refusing), but you cannot enjoy a beer?

But is it hypocrisy? An eighteen-year-old cannot be President or a Senator or a Representative. Is that hypocrisy?

-------------------------

* Three of the exceptions are (and were at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment) firmly rooted in international law. A person born in the U.S. to a foreign serving in the diplomatic service of a foreign entity (or, in the case of the Vatican, a foreign non-national entity) is not automatically a citizen by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor is a person born to foreign national on a ship in U.S. waters. American Indians are also not automatically citizens at birth by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. They are citizens at birth by virtue of a statute, but that is not the same thing.

[Gob]

It's a good job, being Italian PM, I wouldn't mind having a few weeks of it..

ROME: Dozens of naked women surround the Italian Prime Minister vying with each other to arouse him - this was what Silvio Berlusconi's ''bunga bunga'' parties were like, as described to prosecutors by a key participant.

''After dinner we went into a hall in the basement where the bunga bunga was held,'' Karima El Mahroug, a pole dancer nicknamed Ruby the Heart Stealer, was quoted as saying to investigators in leaks published by the daily La Repubblica.



''All the girls were naked during the bunga bunga, and I had the feeling that they were competing with each other to make Berlusconi notice them by performing more and more daring sexual acts,'' she was quoted as saying.
Advertisement: Story continues below

Ms Mahroug is the woman prosecutors say Mr Berlusconi paid to have sex with at his villa outside Milan when she was just 17, a crime in Italy, though both parties deny it. The Prime Minister is also accused of abusing his power by getting her released from police custodywhen she was later arrested for theft.

Mr Berlusconi faces trial on both charges, which he denies, starting on April 6.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/women-compe ... 1b08u.html

[Scooter]

In an attempt to evade prosecution for this and the myriad other offenses for which he is currently being prosecuted or under investigation, he is trying to push a series of judicial reforms through parliament. Included in these is a requirement for a 2/3rds majority for the Constitutional Court (the court which fulfills some of the functions of the SCOTUS or supreme courts in other countries) in order to invalidate laws passed by parliament. He will probably be able to cobble together a majority to get it passed; at which point the only way to overturn it will be through a national referendum in which at least 50% of eligible voters participate.

[dgs49]

Based on what a casual U.S. reader can learn about it, the Italian "criminal justice system" is even more fouled up than the one we have here.

Mr. B is a rich reprobate. So what? He says they didn't have sex and the girl says they didn't have sex. Why is this not the end of the matter?

He gave her some money. So what? He's rich and she's beautiful. It is impossible to establish a quid pro quo if neither party will acknowledge it.

The parallel with Clinton is this: He was also a reprobate who had a long history of using and abusing women. Both maintained their supporters who claimed that their personal shortcomings should not concern the general population, as they did not affect their functioning as high elected officials.

Americans are such prudes. Not sophisticated at all, like Europeans.