«I saw little girls going up, I sometimes met them at the entrance, they were accompanied by adult men but what could I do? In this condominium, with the opening of the B&B, we went through a lot: rowdy, drunk tourists, a boy once felt ill and the ambulance arrived, we called the police.” Via Principe Amedeojust two kilometers from Old Bari. The smell of the sea comes clear here too with the wind. Mrs. Anna answers the intercom. In her building for several years an apartment has been converted by the owner into a B & B and here, Christina driven by the “Team” of women with whom she had started prostituting herself in the autumn of 2021, she met some men. The investigations of the Flying Squad have ascertained “the systematic use of this accommodation facility for the practice of prostitution”. And the mechanism was safe: there are no cameras in the building, entry to the B&B after booking online or by telephone is guaranteed by a numerical code. The owner does not need to be present. And in fact the owner in question was totally unaware of what was happening in his facility.
A curtained building like many others and a small Madonna that dominates at the beginning of the stairs. Cristina, during the protected hearings, confirmed that here in the last period (between the end of February and the beginning of March 2022), she met men. But the accommodation facilities involved in the Bari investigation on a ring of child prostitution, which led the Prosecutor’s Office to issue a precautionary measure against ten people, including two clients of the girls who ended up under house arrest, there are many more. And we also get to Trani and Monopoli.
Minors forced into prostitution in Bari, the testimony of the 16-year-old: “They gave us 300 euros, so we bought designer clothes”
The main ones, however, are discovered by walking through the streets of center of Bari and even passing the Central station and the Petruzzelli theatre. «The B&B changed management a couple of years ago, keeping the original name. I didn’t know that young girls came here, but unfortunately I confess that it doesn’t tell me anything new. Booking a room to practice your profession is a usual thing, many adult women do it and I myself, who have a B&B, found myself in an unpleasant situation but I couldn’t do anything because when I informed the girl that she had booked the room for several days who had to warn me about any guests, replied that I was violating his privacy. She was an adult.” Annamaria leaves the bar that she has managed for years Viale dell’Unità d’Italiapassing a cosmetics shop you arrive at the door of another B&B whose owner was Michele Annosciaborn in 1979. It is he who was subjected by the investigating judge to the residence obligation, the January 19, 2022 to warn Cristina’s mother of the risks her daughter was running, that is, that she was approaching the world of prostitution, associating with “unsavory” people. This passage was deemed by the investigators to be sufficient to demonstrate “the perfect awareness on the part of Annoscia – we read in the documents – of the prostitution rings that revolved around the city of Bari”.
However, when Cristina changes direction and abandons that of the “girls team”, led by Marilu Lopez And Antonella Albanesethe prostitution business is taken over by Nicola Basile and here, in addition to the change in clientele, there is an upgrade in facilities: from B&Bs to luxurious hotel rooms. One of the hotels in question is discovered on the seafront of Bari. «We always check the documents not only for customers but also for their guests – says the manager – unfortunately, having the restaurant on the top floor, it is possible that these girls entered by bypassing the control at the reception”. And in fact it is exactly like that. Cristina also tells the story in the hearing that she entered that hotel secretly. She brought it to us, together with a friend, a wealthy 47-year-old client who ended up under house arrest. “We saw each other three times with him” says a friend of Cristina’s. In the hotel on the seafront the girls meet with the man and his lawyer friend, born in 1968, who was forced to stay home following the investigation: «they took a suite with a huge bathtub. We had sexual intercourse and on that occasion they paid us more, they gave us 250 euros each. It always had to be February. At the end, Cristina and I went to eat in Polignano.” The man told them «that he would make us a lot of money. On another occasion he gave us a gold card and he told us we couldn’t withdraw more than that 20,000 euros per week. Cristina kept this card, which bore her name, for a while, then I took it. We tried to withdraw but with the pin she had given us she didn’t allow the withdrawal.”
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