ROME -- A judge has ruled that a former underage call girl involved in the ‘baby squillo’ case scandal of teenage prostitutes, whose clients included UN food agency executives, should be given compensation of 30 books about female emancipation instead of 20 million euros she requested, judicial sources said Monday.

 The young girl, aged 14 at the time the scandal erupted involving senior functinaries of the FAO and Ifad as well as the husband of politician Alessandra Mussolini, had been involved the ‘baby squillo’ underage prostitution racket in the elegant Parioli neighbourhood of Rom in 2013, when young girls were found to be partaking in cocaine-fuelled sexual favours for the Roman ‘well-to-do’ upper classes in return for cash.

 Instead of the sum of 20 million euros requested by the young girl’s lawyer, Giancarlo Di Giulio, to repay her 'moral damages,' the judge ordered a forner client to buy her a collection of 30 works of literature about femininity and female identity instead.

 Amongst these were selected works by Oriana Fallaci, Sibilla Aleramo, Virginia Woolf, and poetry by Emily Dickinson. Also, the Diary of Anne Frank, the three volumes of 'History of Women in the West' by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, and many other big socio-historical studies of women and femininity.

 In addition to the books, the young girl was also given various films including ‘Sufragettes,’ in an attempt to teach this 'baby squillo,' who chose to sell her body at 15, about the plight of ‘the Second Sex’ over time and the historical problematics of female identity.

 It is a symbolic gesture, especially in the context of this particular case. Instead of money -- the very driving force behind the young girls’ decisions to sell their bodies for cash to buy smartphones, new clothes and shoes etc. -- this ‘baby squillo’ was given books, instruments that can teach so much by opening up new worlds and connecting each and every reader to what has come before.

 nkd