A court in Rome has handed down an unusual penalty to the [rapist] of [a child victim of commercial sexual exploitation] and ordered him to buy her 30 books on the theme of women’s dignity.
In addition to a two-year jail sentence, the unnamed man, 35, will be required to give the 15-year-old victim a list of famous novels.
These include books 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 [child sexual exploitation] 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 [commercial sexual exploitation] with cash which they used to ‘buy new clothes and the latest mobile phones’, reports said, citing investigators.
In the 2014 trial of the [child sexual exploitation] ring’s mastermind, who was 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.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote: ‘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.’
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.
She said: ‘Adolescence is not the time for reflection, what he did was much worse: an adult who, knowingly, paid for sex with a minor.’
Am posting this for information only, not approval. Also, it’s the Daily Mail, so I’m not even going to bother trying to complain about their use of the term ‘sex work’ in relation to a raped child.
The first comment (as of reading) is pretty accurate:
Are you kidding me? Yeah throw all that at the victim? Should have given them 30 years in prison for rape of a child rather than throwing a ton of books at her – like she’s going to be spending her recovery reading rather than surviving! Make him pay for 30 years of therapy and a safe place for her to live and the antidepressants she will likely need…books emphasising how much was stolen from her is hardly appropriate!
Anti-Porn Feminists 
Two years? 😦
And … same old story. Let’s blame the female victims who were raped for not knowing better. So if we all read Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank’s Diary and Emily Dickinson, will that lesson our chances of getting raped?
Cavarero is on the right lines. What about a compulsory women’s studies course in gaol? No release until he passes. With distinction.
Lol, the Guardian published the exact same story (the exact same wording), so much for ‘broadsheets’!