PADOVA – A summary conviction and a plea bargain. Then the referral to trial of the other eight men, residents between Padua and the province, accused – like the two who left the scene yesterday morning – of child prostitution for having had paid sexual intercourse with a child prostitute: an Italian girl who was 15 years old at the time of the events.
THE DECISION
Yesterday morning, in front of the judge of the preliminary hearing in Venice – where the proceedings are based since the lagoon is the competent prosecutor’s office for this type of crime – the ten clients of the baby prostitute divided their judicial fate. One of them, of African origin, ratified the plea bargain of 1 year and 8 months decided in the last hearing; a second man was instead sentenced to 8 months of imprisonment, with the sentence suspended. All the other eight have decided to discuss the preliminary hearing at the end of which the referral to trial was ordered: the trial will open in Venice on May 14, 2025. And the 15-year-old, who in the meantime has become an adult, will be a civil party assisted by the lawyer Pietro Someda.
THE FACTS
The girl, a restless teenager with several problems behind her, had started taking hot photos of herself with her cell phone in the spring of 2021: explicit images that had been used to register on the website www.moscarossa.biz. A few days later, next to the photos, there was the price list: from 50 to 100 euros for a sexual service. In a short time, in the month of June of that year, she had thus managed to create a significant customer base. Those who had contacted her for easy and paid sex had been men between the ages of 21 and 50 living in Padua, San Pietro in Gu, Saonara, San Giorgio delle Pertiche and Campodarsego. The one who uncovered everything was the mother of the 15-year-old who, again in June 2021, had checked her phone to keep her safe from past ghosts. In her daughter’s smartphone, however, the woman had found hard photos of her daughter, accesses to the website and the contacts of at least thirty customers.
THE INVESTIGATIONS
The men of the Flying Squad, having acquired the girl’s cell phone, traced the identities of about thirty clients, tracked them down and questioned them. They themselves had said that the meetings took place in the car, at the clients’ homes and in a guesthouse near the Borgomagno overpass, at any time of day or night. During the investigations, the investigators had ascertained that most of the adults identified had not had any sexual intercourse with the teenager and so the circle had narrowed down to the ten names that ended up in front of the Venetian GUP yesterday morning.
After her mother reported it, the 15-year-old was placed in a protected community for help.
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