If you mention the word Silvio Berlusconi anywhere in this magnificent city, or across the nation for that matter, you will be met with a typically robust Italian response. Love him or hate him, everyone here has a view about their controversial leader. Next month Berlusconi will face court, charged with paying for sex with an under aged prostitute, a charge he strongly denies. Amos Roberts has been canvassing the views of those who say Berlusconi's bedroom antics have debased Italian culture and women in particular.
REPORTER: Amos Roberts
FEMALE PRESENTER (Translation): I'm here to remind you of the phone-in vote - would you like to see your daughter naked on a calendar?
Italian television has become synonymous with trashy talk shows and female flesh. And in Berlusconi's Italy, this is all most young people have ever known. But in Chiaveri, on the ItalianRiviera teenagers are learning to take a closer look.
LORELLA ZANARDO, DIRECTOR, “WOMEN’S BODIES.” (Translation): Good morning everyone.
Lorella Zanardo is here to show them a documentary she has made about women on Italian television.
LORELLA ZANARDO (Translation): I saw something not seen in other European countries, at least not this much.
These clips in Zanardo's films aren't from late-night TV shows, many are broadcast during the day or early evening, showing women who are not just sexualized - they are often humiliated.
DOCUMENTARY “WOMEN’S BODIES” (Translation): Can a woman be made to crawl under a perspex table – pretend to be the legs of the table and crouch there for ages as if it were only a silly game?
PRESENTER, LIBERO SHOW (Translation): Damn it! You should work for a porn director - you’d earn more for less effort.
LORELLA ZANARDO: The most shocking thing I saw was where we saw a young woman hanging like a ham and stamped on her arse like a ham, like an animal, and I remember when I first saw it, I started to cry. I felt that me, myself, I was a woman, so I felt this humiliating on my body.
PRESENTER, BUONA DOMENICA SHOW (Translation): I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it for all Italian men – get in the shower.
Zanardo said she only acted this way because she had spent years living outside Italy and hadn't been desensitized.
LORELLA ZANARDO: My impression was that it was not a scandal for Italians, it was normal. It's the same as if you take a small dose of poison every day, in the end you will die, but you don't realise it, so it was important for me to - to shock them.
REPORTER: That scene that you described, of a woman who has her bottom stamped like a piece of meat, even things like that - people watching that at home, Italians, are not shocked.
LORELLA ZANARDO: No.
VALERIA MARINI, SHOWGIRL: When the light hits my face, it's better.
REPORTER: Up a little bit.
VALERIA MARINI: I can go like this a little more.
REPORTER: I understand. Just to get a bit more light.
Celebrity showgirl Valeria Marini has spent 20 years performing and bearing her flesh in the name of entertainment. She's offended by suggestions that women are being exploited in television.
VALERIA MARINI: No. Absolutely, this is not true. This is not true.
Valeria Marini says you need a lot more than just a pretty face to make it on TV.
VALERIA MARINI: I like this work. I had a dream, I work hard and one day my dreams come true. Madonna in 'Blonde Ambition', she start like this.
REPORTER: Madonna in 'Blonde Ambition'?
VALERIA MARINI: Yes, I work hard. I had a dream and one day my dream came true. For me, it's the same.
FEMALE PRESENTER (Translation): Beautiful and dumb on TV? Is this how men like women?
Research shows that Italy produces much more television like this than anywhere else in theEurope.
MALE PRESENTER (Translation): Off you go darling, Tito wants to take a look at you, thank you, you may go now.
But why? Lorella Zanardo says it's no accident that commercial television here was pioneered by the country’s prime minister.
LORELLA ZANARDO: Silvio Berlusconi started this type of TV, about 30 years ago, and in a way he - people get accustomed to this images.
And, of course, Silvio Berlusconi, himself, has been accused of judging women based on the way they look.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI, ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER (Translation): A very pretty girl asked my advice, I saw that she was so pretty so I said “Find yourself a rich man.”
If sometimes I happen to look at a beautiful girl – it’s better to like beautiful girls than to be gay.
Two years ago the Prime Minister sparked a feminist backlash when he insulted an Opposition politician on this talk show.
PORTA A PORTA TALK SHOW:
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): Is that Rosy Bindi speaking?
PRESENTER (Translation): Yes, she’s outraged….
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): She’s increasingly more beautiful than intelligent.
PRESENTER (Translation): Please, Prime Minister….
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): No, I’m tired of being polite with people who are always rude to me.
ROSY BINDI (Translation): I’m a woman who is thankfully not at your disposal.
REPORTER: Do you see a connection between these images on television and the kind of statements that Berlusconi makes about women and his own personal behaviour towards women?
LORELLA ZANARDO: Yes, of course. Of course and that's why a lot of people in Italy don't think that our Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi is doing bad, because they have been educated by the images. Why a lot of people say now "What you have against him? He likes ‘bella raggazze’ - he likes beautiful women, it's normal", so he has been preparing his audience also.
In this bizarre Berlusconi campaign video, good looking women from all walks of life, presumably who same women that enjoy watching his television shows, sing Silvio's praise.
SINGER (Translation): Prime Minister, we are with you, thank God Silvio exists!
BARBI: He controls 90% of the television - what you see on television is what he wants you to see. It is a dirty old man and the beautiful woman.
Barbie, Francesca, Anna, Sabina. Four journalists I invited to dinner in Rome. Two work for the foreign media, two for the Italian, one for a newspaper owned by Berlusconi. They agreed that sexist television was one of many problems faced by Italian women – but was Berlusconi to blame.
ANNA: He is the problem. The problem here is if you look at the polls for example, you will see that if we vote tomorrow Berlusconi will win again.
SABINA: Exactly. Exactly.
ANNA: The problem is not Berlusconi but is Italians so we should look at what Italians are right now. What Italian women want right now because they are not forced to go on TV and show their tits and arse.
SABINA: They do it out of choice.
ANNA: Yes!
And certainly a large number of Italians have chosen to stand by Berlusconi despite years of scandal. He was publicly dumped by his wife. Questioned about gifts to a teenage underwear model, and denounced by an outspoken call girl. Then there was a string of political appointments to show girls and beauty contestants and now he's been charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old, a Moroccan stripper known as Ruby the Heartstealer, as well as for using his influence to get her released from custody.
BARBI: Everything in Italy is about sex. Everything in Italy is about sex.
Sex appeal was clearly a consideration in the appointment of Berlusconi's cabinet as telephone intercepts have revealed.
ANNA: The Minister of Education was talking to the Minister of Equal Opportunities, they were discussing between women and women, woman, and woman, about the best way to make a blow job with Mr Berlusconi.
BARBI: Everyone knows it, everybody’s read it, and nobody doubts it.
ANNA: I told to my father "You taught me the wrong things. You taught me to study, go to university and be brilliant, and it was so easy. You should have tell me why don't you learn to do a proper blow job for powerful man, and you get whatever you want. You can become a Minister".
REPORTER: You said that to your father?
ANNA: Yes, I said that to my father.
FRANCESCA: I can tell you what my brother said, he said "You were sitting on a fortune, but you didn't use it".
BARBI: I have a friend whose daughter gives sexual favours to have her cell phone topped up, to pay for her cell phone. She'll do whatever she has to do and they pay for her cell phone, they top up her cell phone. It starts very young.
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): Do you really think he had sex with minors? A 74-year-old man who has had a prostate operation, who does it five or six times in a row – who is this Berlusconi?
Daniela Santuche is one of Berlusconi’s staunchest female supporters and a deputy minister in his government, far from discriminating against women, she says Berlusconi has emancipated them – the pretty ones that is!
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): It’s rather thanks to Berlusconi that Italy is getting over the idea that beautiful is dumb. Berlusconi has promoted women who look good, who are just lucky to have been born with pleasing features and he has tried to dismantle the myth that if you are smart, you are ugly and if you are pretty, you are stupid.
Daniela Santuche says she's attended parties at Berlusconi's home, and dismisses all the allegations of sleaze.
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): I have never seen minors, I have never seen these girls at the dinners, I don’t know about “bunga bunga” or any…. I know another Silvio Berlusconi and I hope he is the same Silvio Berlusconi for whom the majority of Italians continue to vote and who know him as I do.
WOMAN PROTESTER (Translation): This is probably the moment to say enough is enough.
For many women, the latest scandal involving so-called bunga bunga parties, and a teenage stripper Ruby the Heartstealer, was the last straw. Hundreds of thousands of protesters flocked to piazzas across the country last month.
GIULIA BONGIORNO, POLITICIAN (Translation): We needed the Ruby case, because suddenly I’ve seen many people, many women, who have decided they can no longer be silent.
Berlusconi's supporters said these protests were organised by the left. But the anger here crosses party lines. Giulia Bongiorno is a prominent right-wing politician from a party in Coalition with Berlusconi.
GIULIA BONGIORNO (Translation): I would like the women here today to understand something. We are, and we need to be protagonists – we cannot be the extras. I ask you… if I asked you, where do Italian women play a central role today? Do you know the only area in which I see women protagonists, in which women play a central role? Jokes. We have had enough of being the butt of jokes! Let’s become protagonists in the life ofItaly.
VALERIA MARINI: Yes I knew about this demonstration, I'm always on the part of the woman, I'm a woman, I'm proud to be an Italian woman, I love other women, I am friend of other woman, no in competition.
Despite her solidarity with the sisterhood, Marini is surprised that Italian women have anything to protest about.
VALERIA MARINI: The woman’s position in society is a fact. So sometimes there needs to do demonstration.
REPORTER: Do you think that there is a problem with the position of women in Italy, or do you think women in Italy, or do you think they have equality?
VALERIA MARINI: No, of course they have equality.
BARBI: There is not one initiative right now in the Italian parliament that will better the lives of women. I have checked, I have looked, I have asked the question, there is not one initiative in parliament that will help Italian women.
Italian women won some crucial battles in the 1970s when abortion and divorce were legalized but these female journalists despair at how little progress has been made since then.
BARBI: There's a recent studies showing 70% of Italian men of our generation have never turned on the stove. 90% have never run the dishwasher, this is much more than sex, and buying sex, going through thinking show girls are the only girls, this is about helping in the house, equality on a domestic level, it's a huge problem going beyond what Silvio Berlusconi shows in his personal life.
ANNA: It's not just Berlusconi, it’s something much more depressing according to me than Berlusconi. So amazingly, if Silvio Berlusconi were to go away, things will not change.
BARBI: No, it will take a long time to change this trend.
VALERIA MARINI: Thank you so much - I love you - I love you – a big kiss from Italy.
YALDA HAKIM: Amos Roberts reporting there and Italy may never be the same again now that the phrase ‘bunga bunga party’ has become a household expression. There may be millions of Italians who want Silvio Berlusconi out of office or even jailed, but it's worth noting that he's actually Italy's second-longest serving Prime Minister. In fact, you don't have to go very far around here to find people who despite all the controversy are still Silvio Berlusconi supporters.
Downtown Rome is as good a place as any to test public opinion.
REPORTER: So what do you think of Silvio Berlusconi?
MAN (Translation): He’s made mistakes, he has done things that are not right but his life has nothing to do with politics.
REPORTER: What do you think of the way he portrays women on his TV channels?
MAN (Translation): I think it’s good - it’s a problem for women but not for us men.
MAN 2 (Translation): I believe that nowadays it is absolutely normal, we have been seeing women in bikinis on RAI TV for the last 20 years, so I see no reason now to pursue this scandal-mongering politics.
WOMAN (Translation): I think it is a very difficult time as the press attacks him using the “scandal politics” angle, I believe that it is embarrassing to have to face these matters, but as a woman and as a citizen – I’m interested in understanding the country’s politics.
MAN 2 (Translation): Like all politicians there is a positive and negative side, Berlusconi has done some positive things for the people. It seems strange to me that a man at that level could organize parties as portrayed by the Left or those who work for the Left. They were likely normal parties that got dramatized so as to manipulate the more vulnerable part of the Italian population.
REPORTER: As a woman, does it bother you that there are allegations that he's had sex with an under aged girl.
WOMAN (Translation): Private life is private life, but these things are very serious and should his guilt be demonstrated this would really outrage me as a woman but also as a ….but also as a citizen.
MAN 2 (Translation): I believe he is doing things for Italy that have not been done in 50 years by others – Christian Democrats and Centre-Left. This is a country where those in oppositionare just being obstructive without proposing any innovations.
Silvio Berlusconi supporters in downtown Rome, and the controversial Prime Minister will stand trial on 6 April. You can go online for more background on Silvio Berlusconi's colourful life.
Story Reporter/Camera
AMOS ROBERTS
Rome Camera
JORGE ZARATE
Story Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
Rome Producer
PETER CHARLEY
Story Fixers
SABINA CASTELFRANCO
GIULIA ALAGNA
Rome Fixer
JOSEPHINE MCKENNA
Editor
MICAH MCGOWN
Translation/Subtitling
DONNA TIERI
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
13th March 2011
REPORTER: Amos Roberts
FEMALE PRESENTER (Translation): I'm here to remind you of the phone-in vote - would you like to see your daughter naked on a calendar?
Italian television has become synonymous with trashy talk shows and female flesh. And in Berlusconi's Italy, this is all most young people have ever known. But in Chiaveri, on the ItalianRiviera teenagers are learning to take a closer look.
LORELLA ZANARDO, DIRECTOR, “WOMEN’S BODIES.” (Translation): Good morning everyone.
Lorella Zanardo is here to show them a documentary she has made about women on Italian television.
LORELLA ZANARDO (Translation): I saw something not seen in other European countries, at least not this much.
These clips in Zanardo's films aren't from late-night TV shows, many are broadcast during the day or early evening, showing women who are not just sexualized - they are often humiliated.
DOCUMENTARY “WOMEN’S BODIES” (Translation): Can a woman be made to crawl under a perspex table – pretend to be the legs of the table and crouch there for ages as if it were only a silly game?
PRESENTER, LIBERO SHOW (Translation): Damn it! You should work for a porn director - you’d earn more for less effort.
LORELLA ZANARDO: The most shocking thing I saw was where we saw a young woman hanging like a ham and stamped on her arse like a ham, like an animal, and I remember when I first saw it, I started to cry. I felt that me, myself, I was a woman, so I felt this humiliating on my body.
PRESENTER, BUONA DOMENICA SHOW (Translation): I’m not doing it for myself, I’m doing it for all Italian men – get in the shower.
Zanardo said she only acted this way because she had spent years living outside Italy and hadn't been desensitized.
LORELLA ZANARDO: My impression was that it was not a scandal for Italians, it was normal. It's the same as if you take a small dose of poison every day, in the end you will die, but you don't realise it, so it was important for me to - to shock them.
REPORTER: That scene that you described, of a woman who has her bottom stamped like a piece of meat, even things like that - people watching that at home, Italians, are not shocked.
LORELLA ZANARDO: No.
VALERIA MARINI, SHOWGIRL: When the light hits my face, it's better.
REPORTER: Up a little bit.
VALERIA MARINI: I can go like this a little more.
REPORTER: I understand. Just to get a bit more light.
Celebrity showgirl Valeria Marini has spent 20 years performing and bearing her flesh in the name of entertainment. She's offended by suggestions that women are being exploited in television.
VALERIA MARINI: No. Absolutely, this is not true. This is not true.
Valeria Marini says you need a lot more than just a pretty face to make it on TV.
VALERIA MARINI: I like this work. I had a dream, I work hard and one day my dreams come true. Madonna in 'Blonde Ambition', she start like this.
REPORTER: Madonna in 'Blonde Ambition'?
VALERIA MARINI: Yes, I work hard. I had a dream and one day my dream came true. For me, it's the same.
FEMALE PRESENTER (Translation): Beautiful and dumb on TV? Is this how men like women?
Research shows that Italy produces much more television like this than anywhere else in theEurope.
MALE PRESENTER (Translation): Off you go darling, Tito wants to take a look at you, thank you, you may go now.
But why? Lorella Zanardo says it's no accident that commercial television here was pioneered by the country’s prime minister.
LORELLA ZANARDO: Silvio Berlusconi started this type of TV, about 30 years ago, and in a way he - people get accustomed to this images.
And, of course, Silvio Berlusconi, himself, has been accused of judging women based on the way they look.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI, ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER (Translation): A very pretty girl asked my advice, I saw that she was so pretty so I said “Find yourself a rich man.”
If sometimes I happen to look at a beautiful girl – it’s better to like beautiful girls than to be gay.
Two years ago the Prime Minister sparked a feminist backlash when he insulted an Opposition politician on this talk show.
PORTA A PORTA TALK SHOW:
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): Is that Rosy Bindi speaking?
PRESENTER (Translation): Yes, she’s outraged….
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): She’s increasingly more beautiful than intelligent.
PRESENTER (Translation): Please, Prime Minister….
SILVIO BERLUSCONI (Translation): No, I’m tired of being polite with people who are always rude to me.
ROSY BINDI (Translation): I’m a woman who is thankfully not at your disposal.
REPORTER: Do you see a connection between these images on television and the kind of statements that Berlusconi makes about women and his own personal behaviour towards women?
LORELLA ZANARDO: Yes, of course. Of course and that's why a lot of people in Italy don't think that our Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi is doing bad, because they have been educated by the images. Why a lot of people say now "What you have against him? He likes ‘bella raggazze’ - he likes beautiful women, it's normal", so he has been preparing his audience also.
In this bizarre Berlusconi campaign video, good looking women from all walks of life, presumably who same women that enjoy watching his television shows, sing Silvio's praise.
SINGER (Translation): Prime Minister, we are with you, thank God Silvio exists!
BARBI: He controls 90% of the television - what you see on television is what he wants you to see. It is a dirty old man and the beautiful woman.
Barbie, Francesca, Anna, Sabina. Four journalists I invited to dinner in Rome. Two work for the foreign media, two for the Italian, one for a newspaper owned by Berlusconi. They agreed that sexist television was one of many problems faced by Italian women – but was Berlusconi to blame.
ANNA: He is the problem. The problem here is if you look at the polls for example, you will see that if we vote tomorrow Berlusconi will win again.
SABINA: Exactly. Exactly.
ANNA: The problem is not Berlusconi but is Italians so we should look at what Italians are right now. What Italian women want right now because they are not forced to go on TV and show their tits and arse.
SABINA: They do it out of choice.
ANNA: Yes!
And certainly a large number of Italians have chosen to stand by Berlusconi despite years of scandal. He was publicly dumped by his wife. Questioned about gifts to a teenage underwear model, and denounced by an outspoken call girl. Then there was a string of political appointments to show girls and beauty contestants and now he's been charged with paying for sex with a 17-year-old, a Moroccan stripper known as Ruby the Heartstealer, as well as for using his influence to get her released from custody.
BARBI: Everything in Italy is about sex. Everything in Italy is about sex.
Sex appeal was clearly a consideration in the appointment of Berlusconi's cabinet as telephone intercepts have revealed.
ANNA: The Minister of Education was talking to the Minister of Equal Opportunities, they were discussing between women and women, woman, and woman, about the best way to make a blow job with Mr Berlusconi.
BARBI: Everyone knows it, everybody’s read it, and nobody doubts it.
ANNA: I told to my father "You taught me the wrong things. You taught me to study, go to university and be brilliant, and it was so easy. You should have tell me why don't you learn to do a proper blow job for powerful man, and you get whatever you want. You can become a Minister".
REPORTER: You said that to your father?
ANNA: Yes, I said that to my father.
FRANCESCA: I can tell you what my brother said, he said "You were sitting on a fortune, but you didn't use it".
BARBI: I have a friend whose daughter gives sexual favours to have her cell phone topped up, to pay for her cell phone. She'll do whatever she has to do and they pay for her cell phone, they top up her cell phone. It starts very young.
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): Do you really think he had sex with minors? A 74-year-old man who has had a prostate operation, who does it five or six times in a row – who is this Berlusconi?
Daniela Santuche is one of Berlusconi’s staunchest female supporters and a deputy minister in his government, far from discriminating against women, she says Berlusconi has emancipated them – the pretty ones that is!
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): It’s rather thanks to Berlusconi that Italy is getting over the idea that beautiful is dumb. Berlusconi has promoted women who look good, who are just lucky to have been born with pleasing features and he has tried to dismantle the myth that if you are smart, you are ugly and if you are pretty, you are stupid.
Daniela Santuche says she's attended parties at Berlusconi's home, and dismisses all the allegations of sleaze.
DANIELA SANTUCHE (Translation): I have never seen minors, I have never seen these girls at the dinners, I don’t know about “bunga bunga” or any…. I know another Silvio Berlusconi and I hope he is the same Silvio Berlusconi for whom the majority of Italians continue to vote and who know him as I do.
WOMAN PROTESTER (Translation): This is probably the moment to say enough is enough.
For many women, the latest scandal involving so-called bunga bunga parties, and a teenage stripper Ruby the Heartstealer, was the last straw. Hundreds of thousands of protesters flocked to piazzas across the country last month.
GIULIA BONGIORNO, POLITICIAN (Translation): We needed the Ruby case, because suddenly I’ve seen many people, many women, who have decided they can no longer be silent.
Berlusconi's supporters said these protests were organised by the left. But the anger here crosses party lines. Giulia Bongiorno is a prominent right-wing politician from a party in Coalition with Berlusconi.
GIULIA BONGIORNO (Translation): I would like the women here today to understand something. We are, and we need to be protagonists – we cannot be the extras. I ask you… if I asked you, where do Italian women play a central role today? Do you know the only area in which I see women protagonists, in which women play a central role? Jokes. We have had enough of being the butt of jokes! Let’s become protagonists in the life ofItaly.
VALERIA MARINI: Yes I knew about this demonstration, I'm always on the part of the woman, I'm a woman, I'm proud to be an Italian woman, I love other women, I am friend of other woman, no in competition.
Despite her solidarity with the sisterhood, Marini is surprised that Italian women have anything to protest about.
VALERIA MARINI: The woman’s position in society is a fact. So sometimes there needs to do demonstration.
REPORTER: Do you think that there is a problem with the position of women in Italy, or do you think women in Italy, or do you think they have equality?
VALERIA MARINI: No, of course they have equality.
BARBI: There is not one initiative right now in the Italian parliament that will better the lives of women. I have checked, I have looked, I have asked the question, there is not one initiative in parliament that will help Italian women.
Italian women won some crucial battles in the 1970s when abortion and divorce were legalized but these female journalists despair at how little progress has been made since then.
BARBI: There's a recent studies showing 70% of Italian men of our generation have never turned on the stove. 90% have never run the dishwasher, this is much more than sex, and buying sex, going through thinking show girls are the only girls, this is about helping in the house, equality on a domestic level, it's a huge problem going beyond what Silvio Berlusconi shows in his personal life.
ANNA: It's not just Berlusconi, it’s something much more depressing according to me than Berlusconi. So amazingly, if Silvio Berlusconi were to go away, things will not change.
BARBI: No, it will take a long time to change this trend.
VALERIA MARINI: Thank you so much - I love you - I love you – a big kiss from Italy.
YALDA HAKIM: Amos Roberts reporting there and Italy may never be the same again now that the phrase ‘bunga bunga party’ has become a household expression. There may be millions of Italians who want Silvio Berlusconi out of office or even jailed, but it's worth noting that he's actually Italy's second-longest serving Prime Minister. In fact, you don't have to go very far around here to find people who despite all the controversy are still Silvio Berlusconi supporters.
Downtown Rome is as good a place as any to test public opinion.
REPORTER: So what do you think of Silvio Berlusconi?
MAN (Translation): He’s made mistakes, he has done things that are not right but his life has nothing to do with politics.
REPORTER: What do you think of the way he portrays women on his TV channels?
MAN (Translation): I think it’s good - it’s a problem for women but not for us men.
MAN 2 (Translation): I believe that nowadays it is absolutely normal, we have been seeing women in bikinis on RAI TV for the last 20 years, so I see no reason now to pursue this scandal-mongering politics.
WOMAN (Translation): I think it is a very difficult time as the press attacks him using the “scandal politics” angle, I believe that it is embarrassing to have to face these matters, but as a woman and as a citizen – I’m interested in understanding the country’s politics.
MAN 2 (Translation): Like all politicians there is a positive and negative side, Berlusconi has done some positive things for the people. It seems strange to me that a man at that level could organize parties as portrayed by the Left or those who work for the Left. They were likely normal parties that got dramatized so as to manipulate the more vulnerable part of the Italian population.
REPORTER: As a woman, does it bother you that there are allegations that he's had sex with an under aged girl.
WOMAN (Translation): Private life is private life, but these things are very serious and should his guilt be demonstrated this would really outrage me as a woman but also as a ….but also as a citizen.
MAN 2 (Translation): I believe he is doing things for Italy that have not been done in 50 years by others – Christian Democrats and Centre-Left. This is a country where those in oppositionare just being obstructive without proposing any innovations.
Silvio Berlusconi supporters in downtown Rome, and the controversial Prime Minister will stand trial on 6 April. You can go online for more background on Silvio Berlusconi's colourful life.
Story Reporter/Camera
AMOS ROBERTS
Rome Camera
JORGE ZARATE
Story Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
Rome Producer
PETER CHARLEY
Story Fixers
SABINA CASTELFRANCO
GIULIA ALAGNA
Rome Fixer
JOSEPHINE MCKENNA
Editor
MICAH MCGOWN
Translation/Subtitling
DONNA TIERI
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
13th March 2011