It’s official. An Italian judge has ordered Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on a variety of charges including paying for sex with a minor. The minor is a Moroccan-born nightclub dancer, Karima el Mahroug, who goes by the Ruby Rubacuori (“Ruby Heart Stealer”). As someone who generally thinks consensual sexual hijinks shouldn’t get you kicked out of office, I must say that I’m pretty confident that an American head of state would probably have to resign his or her office at the point where they were charged with having sex with an underage call girl but who knows?
In any case, Berlusconi’s efforts to stay ahead of the law were likely numbered in any case. Police say Berlusconi tried to get police in Milan to release her from custody after she was arrested for theft by claiming that Ruby was the granddaughter of now-former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and that her arrest might cause an diplomatic incident. If Berlusconi had paid almost $10,000 to have sex with Mubarak’s seventeen year old granddaughter you’d imagine that might have caused an diplomatic. But, alas, she’s not. She’s the daughter of Tunisian immigrants from Sicily.
And this isn’t Berlusconi’s only problem. Over the years he’s more or less openly carried on liaisons with a variety of very young women in the public eye. But he’s gone further than that. He’s also placed many of them in government jobs and in a number of cases arranged for them to run for office on his conservative party ticket. Here’s their story.
