I am in crammed into a station wagon headed for Milan on Italy’s A1 autostrada with three AP Television colleagues (Paolo Lucariello, Pietro De Cristofaro and Davide Ghiglione). Next to me I have one camera and one computer bag. Under my feet are the metal legs for the platform we have in the back. Also crammed in the back are two more computers, one tripod, two LiveU backpacks, and a camping chair. We had to leave our step-ladder in Rome because it didn’t fit. Our colleague Paolo Santalucia is already up in Milan with a satellite truck. All this equipment so that we can be part of the media circus surrounding the announcement tomorrow by judges in Milan of the verdict in Silvio Berlusconi’s prostitution with a minor and abuse of office trial.
The former Prime Minister is accused of paying for sex with a 17-year-old and using his power as Prime Minister to cover it up. The trial has gone on for two years with 50 hearings, and a long line of show-girls and trashy tv starlets revealing details of bunga-bunga parties at Berlusconi’s villa on the outskirts of Milan known as Villa Arcore although most of them were speaking for the defense.
Prosecutors have asked that the 76-year-old Berlusconi get a six year prison sentence and a permanent ban from serving in public office. AP Television is hoping to be able to provide the verdict live. I also have to be in the courtroom filming it with my iPhone (new career as a camerawoman??!!), plus coverage outside, interviews with lawyers, prosecutors, analysts, and people on the street. And of course we will be chasing the protagonists.
At the center of the trial is the Moroccan woman Karima el-Mahroug, known by her stage name “Ruby-Heart-Stealer.” Ruby attended several of these parties when she was 17, still a minor. She has said she regularly received envelopes of cash filled with 500 euro notes after attending these parties. According to the prosecution’s reconstruction, the girls attending these parties would get an envelope of 2-3000 euros in cash for attending the party and 5-6000 if they spent the night at the Villa. Berlusconi did not deny giving out the cash and confirmed that he gave an additional 57,000 euros to Ruby to help her open a beauty salon.
The chief prosecutor Ilda Boccassini (see blog post: The Italian Tiger Mother) described the evenings as “hard” while the defense, led by Berlusconi’s lawyer Niccolo’ Ghedini called them “burlesque”.
Prosecutor Boccassini said the evenings and the organization surrounding them were “A system of prostitution for the satisfaction of the sexual pleasures of Berlusconi.” In his own defense, Berlusconi told the courtroom “nothing illegal happened in my home,” and said the evenings were simply “elegant dinners” Berlusconi has also repeatedly denied that he had sex with Ruby. Her version is far more complicated, convoluted by lies and small deceptions.
Ruby, Karima el-Mahroug, was born in Morocco and brought to Italy by her family to live in Sicily in 2003 as a young girl. After a complicated, difficult childhood (she has said in TV interviews that she was raped by her uncles), she ran away from home and lived in various communities in Sicily. She was discovered by one of Berlusconi’s channel’s television anchormen, Emilio Fede (now on trial in Milan for aiding and abetting prostitution), who was presiding over a local beauty pageant in 2009. Fede passed her name along to talent scout Lele Mora (also on trial in Milan for aiding and abetting prostitution). Some time thereafter, Karima el-Mahroug moved to Milan where she worked as a belly-dancer and lead a life on the edge — parties and discos and accusations of prostitution and stealing.
She eventually was invited to Villa Arcore and into the hands, literally, of Silvio Berlusconi. What happened inside the gates of the Villa is what the judges need to decide on. Did Berlusconi have sex with Karima el-Mahroug? Did he know that she was a minor? Did he know that she was not the niece of then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as she claimed?
According to court documents, prosecutors, through the use of intercepted telephone conversations of the young women, established that following the dinners, the girls went with Berlusconi and his two friends to the ‘bunga, bunga’ room, outfitted with a pole for lap-dancing and seats for the men. The starlets were encouraged to put on nurse or police officer costumes but remain topless underneath with just thigh-high nylon stockings. After this entertainment, the young women were then taken to another room, where a Berlusconi aide handed out envelopes to the girls, filled with different amounts of cash. A few would be asked to stay the night with Silvio.
In May 2010, when Karima was arrested for stealing and was being held at the police headquarters in Milan, Silvio Berlusconi, then Premier, called from Paris where he was attending an OECD (Organization for Economic and Cultural Development) conference with various heads of states, and asked the police to release her to Nicole Minetti, formerly Berlusconi’s Dental Hygienist, currently a member of the Lombardy Regional Council for Berlusconi’s party, and organizer of starlets for Berlusconi’s parties. Minetti is also now on trial in Milan for aiding and abetting prostitution. He told police that she was the niece of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and it would be better to avoid a diplomatic incident.
Apparently the police released Karima el-Mahroug to the protection of Minetti despite an order from the Juvenile Court in Sicily that she needed to remain in a community for minors.
The one person who might be able to shed some light on what happened, is the most unreliable. Karima el-Mahroug is now married and living in Genoa with her husband and young baby. She has appeared a couple times in court creating confusion with her contradictory testimony. In 2010 Karima el-Mahroug made a series of sworn statements in which she said she never had sex with Berlusconi and that she had told him she was 24. These statements contradict many phone conversations that were intercepted by investigators in which she repeatedly bragged about her sexual relations with the Prime Minister. In the courtroom she testified that she was just showing off to friends on the phone and none of it was true.
Interestingly whether he is convicted or not, Berlusconi is far from being pushed out of the Italian political picture. He still has two more legal levels — the court of appeals, followed by the court of cassation. It will take a long time.
Aside from the legal/political questions Berlusconi’s Bunga-bunga parties have become symbolic of a period of modern Italian history in which women were degraded and humiliated. It was characterized by omnipresent scantily dress show-girls on tacky tv programs and arrogant men in positions of power. Perhaps Italy is now ready to put that era behind it.
Related Blog Posts:
Really, you could not make this stuff up, it is so far beyond any genre of literature. It is highly comedic and highly tragic. It makes media stars of Ruby Heart Throb, and Berlusconi, for reasons unrelated to governing, yet because he is in government. And ironically, it may sustain his political career. So you are covering one of the high social dramas of the age. Perhaps this somehow balances the scales with the Pope, who is against sexual pleasure entirely. But as you point out, it is women who are degraded, by both Berlusconi and the Pope.
I hope it does turn into a circus, for this might as well be a festival, and provide everyone some fun!
I’ll stay tuned for more . . .
You definitely could not make this stuff up. This morning I interviewed Gianni Barbacetto, the Italian journalist who broke the story and has followed the whole trial….he was filling me in on all sorts of juicy, sordid details that I was not aware of. He pointed out that this is stuff for Hollywood. He is right about that. But again, the bottom line is that women in Italy have paid a high price for all this and no matter what the judges decide, it is time that it ends.
Two years and 50 hearings. Wow, that is really spread out. Means the whole thing could’ve been wrapped up on a couple of months. Please keep us posted. Fascinating story.
Thanks Candace, I will keep you all updated. At this moment I am sitting on a bench outside the Sezione Settima Penale Aula 7 bis waiting for the judges to reach a verdict. They’ve been in deliberations for hours already — or maybe they just took a long lunch.
One can only hope this rubbish is over and done with, what a joke the country became x
I agree Lisa, it is time Italy but bunga bunga behind it.
Good grief. We in America roll our eyes over this, but the degradation and lack of moral fiber is astounding. What do most Italians think of all of this? Given Berlusconi’s showings in elections, I must assume there is a segment of the population that does not mind overly much, and perhaps wish this kind of high life for themselves, if not for their daughters. Compartmentalization, anyone?
By the way, seeing you in the van with those Italian men, I am thinking you have a pretty cool job.
You would be amazed how many people in this country support Berlusconi. He is very popular. I got up this morning and was looking for random people on the street to give us a comment on the trial and right off the bat I got three people who were very pro Berlusconi: one was a woman, a highschool teacher, the next was a man, an ambulance driver, and the third was a businessman.
And yes, I do have a fun job. I have fun working with all these cameramen, they make me laugh and keep me humble. Last night I rented a bike with one of them and we rode all over the city of Milan seeing the Duomo and other sights with a full moon. It would have been very romantic if he weren’t about 15 years younger than I am. Oh well.