An Italian region struggling with policing the sex trade along a heavily wooded road has come up with a novel solution: Just chop down the forest.
The regional government of Abruzzo in central Italy has tried 24-hour patrols, raids and cameras to curb the rampant sex trade on the Bonifica del Tronto road — all to no effect.
Finally, Angelo di Paolo, the regional government’s notoriously decisive public works chief, decided that fighting the forest would be much easier then fighting the sex trade. He declared that all the vegetation on or around the banks of the River Tonto would be cut down. Environmental groups are protesting, saying the plan would destroy 69 acres of woodland vital to local ecosystems.
Wood puns aside, the Italian state has traditionally had a hands-off approach to the sex industry. Street prostitution was legal until 2008, when the minister for equal opportunities, former topless model Mara Carfagna, introduced a national system of fines and jail time for people caught buying or selling sex. She called it the first substantive action against the sex trade in 50 years.
Since then, Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative crackdown on crime and illegal immigration has also attempted to curb the human trafficking of sex workers. A recent census of the Bonifica del Tronto region found about 600 prostitutes from Nigeria, Romania, Brazil, Albania and China. But it remains to be seen whether Abruzzo’s plan will do much to eliminate the larger social problem, or just force human traffickers and prostitutes into different environs.
