Rome: The Moroccan teenager at the centre of a prostitution scandal that has sent Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi to trial says she has done nothing wrong and that "all the gold in the world" could not compensate her for the hurt she has suffered.
In an e-mail exchange with a news agency on Wednesday and Thursday, Karima El Mahrough, who goes by the stage name Ruby, lamented that she has been "treated as a prostitute by all the Italian and foreign media”.
"I WANT TO BE COMPENSATED for having been hurt so much and all the gold in the world would not be enough," she wrote.
Ruby, now 18, requested EUR 15,000 (USD 20,340) for a full TV interview, saying: "I don`t do anything for nothing."
Berlusconi was indicted on Tuesday on charges that he paid for sex with Ruby when she was 17 and under age, then used his influence to cover it up. The trial begins on April 06 in Milan.
Berlusconi has denied ever paying for sex. Ruby, in a January 19 television interview on a TV channel owned by Berlusconi, said she met the 74-year-old Premier at a dinner party at his villa and that he gave her EUR 7,000 (USD 9,500) that evening, but never "put a finger on me”.
The scandal broke last year when it emerged that Berlusconi had intervened on Ruby`s behalf after she was accused of stealing EUR 3,000 (USD 4,100) from a friend and detained by Milan police.
Berlusconi`s defence says the Premier believed at the time that Ruby was a relative of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and that the Premier wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident. Ruby has said that she lied when she told Berlusconi this.
In the meantime, a magazine owned by Berlusconi has fought back allegations that he hosted wild ‘bunga bunga’ sex parties in which escort girls and starlets performed pole dances and strip teases.
The fresh details of the December 31, 2008, party at his Costa Smeralda home, Villa Certosa, were published by Chi (``Who``), a magazine owned by Berlusconi`s Mondadori publishing empire, reports the Telegraph.
It talked of a New Year’s Eve soirée in which dancers were dressed as Father Christmas. The six young women danced on a stage dressed in red mini-dresses edged with fake white fur, black belts and Santa Claus hats, at his beachside villa in Sardinia.
(With ANI inputs)
