Enough with the “bunga bunga!” You’re indicted.
This is just to deliciously karmic. From Bloomberg:
Giulia Turri, Orsola De Cristoforo and Carmen D’Elia were named today as the judges who will preside over the April 6 trial in Milan. Turri, for one, is no stranger to tough cases. In 2009, she presided over a trial in which two managers at Google Inc. were acquitted of tax-evasion charges. Last July, she ordered house arrests as part of a high-profile investigation into cocaine use and trafficking at some of Milan’s most fashionable night clubs.
“In the court we have wonderful judges and most of them are women,” Giuseppe Vaciago, an independent criminal lawyer in Milan, said in a telephone interview. “So this is not so strange, but it is a bit ironic.”
The trial will probe Berlusconi’s relationship with Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan nightclub performer nicknamed Ruby Heart Stealer who attended a party at his Milan mansion last February when she was 17. The abuse-of-power charge stems from his role in helping secure El Mahroug’s release from police custody in Milan after her detention in May on unrelated theft charges.
Two days ago, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets across Italy to protest Berlusconi’s behavior and demand better treatment for women. The female-led protest was sparked by the investigation into whether Berlusconi paid El Mahroug for sex and abused his power in trying to cover it up.
It’s a powerful signal to a stupid man who thought he was still living in the 20th century. More from the New York Times.
A Milan judge on Tuesday ordered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial in April on charges of paying an underage nightclub dancer for sex and of abusing his office to help release her from police custody when she was detained for theft.
The trial is expected to begin April 6, according to a statement released by the judge.
Mr. Berlusconi denies wrongdoing. After the ruling on Tuesday he did not appear at a scheduled news conference in Sicily, where Italy is seeking to stem a flow of more than 5,000 illegal immigrants from Tunisia.
Berlusconi’s ex-wife says Silvio has a “sickness” for “hanging out with underage girls.”
You can call it a “sickness” or even a fetish, but men who like young girls rarely get over it. It’s an obsession that society used to ignore. That Berlusconi was so reckless with his predilection doesn’t surprise me, with his denials the usual response until the humiliation is delivered through evidence.
That said, using the word “underage” for a nightclub dancer who obviously is no longer innocent is one of the problems with how we police and adjudicate sex crimes. Young women are sexualized much earlier than ever before in modern society. It’s a lot more complicated than drawing a line at eighteen, which is what Berlusconi is counting on.
As for the abuse of office charge in getting her off a petty crime beef, Mr. Berlusconi’s simply got a big heart, right?
The coverage in The Star is priceless (h/t Joe Gandelman):
Basta the bunga bunga.
One needn’t be bilingual to get the drift. It’s Italianese: Enough with the orgies, the Lolita prostitutes and the old satyr rutting.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been notoriously leading with his Johnson — Giovanni? — for years, growing increasingly sybaritic and scandalizing as he approaches his 75th birthday, unapologetic and defiant and counter-thrusting as always.
“Bunga bunga’’ has entered the Italian lexicon as slang to describe Berlusconi’s debauchery, shouted in war-type by those newspapers that aren’t part of the premier’s vast, privately owned media empire. But where Egypt’s youth-led revolt succeeded in bringing down a dictator, the democracy that is Italy appears incapable of rousting this aging creep.
Libidinous debauchery has always been a part of Berlusconi’s biography. The trial is certain to make it an official part of Italy’s history.
Comments are closed.