Judge Orders Man to Give Teen Prostitute Feminist Books

A judge in Rome handed down an unusual sentence to a man convicted of hiring a child prostitute, ordering him to give the 15-year-old girl 30 books on the subject of women's dignity, reports the BBC. In addition to two years in jail, the 35-year-old man must buy the victim novels by Virginia Woolf, poems by Emily Dickinson, The Diary of Anne Frank, and other famous works. The order "suggests that the judge favored 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," the newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote, via the AFP.

One author on the list, however, said it was the man who could use some feminist enlightenment. "Adolescence is not the time for reflection. What he did was much worse: an adult who, knowingly, paid for sex with a minor," said Adriana Cavarero, author of Notwithstanding Plato. The unidentified john was busted as part of a three-year probe into a pedophile ring in an upscale suburb of Rome. Teens aged 14 and 15 were lured into sex work and used the money they were paid to buy new clothes and cell phones. The mastermind was sentenced to nine years in jail in 2014. At his trial, the judge said the ring preyed on "children who got carried away with debauchery, without restraint, so they could easily earn money." (More Anne Frank stories.)