'Verbal servicing' does not constitute prostitution

(ANSA) - Rome, August 31 - Giving phone sex for money does not make you a prostitute, as long as it's done solely with the mind, not with the body, Italy's supreme court ruled on Friday.

"Verbally servicing an interlocutor for the purpose of sexual excitement does not constitute a sexual service, if it does not involve the bodily erogenous zones of the person who is getting paid for such a service," the criminal court ruled. The decision overturns a Milan Court of Appeals verdict against a man who paid a young woman to erotically service a client over the phone. The Appeals Court found him guilty of sexual exploitation, but the Cassation Court said there was no crime, because no touching was involved. Prostitution, the judges wrote in their ruling, consists of selling the body, not just the mind. It includes not only physical contact between seller and buyer, but also between the seller and a third party at the buyer's request, or the seller touching his or herself for the same reason. "The act of prostitution may well be carried out at a distance, for example via telephone or Internet web chats," the judges wrote. "Prostitution occurs when the person being paid is asked to carry out a sexual act (no matter in what location or with which partner), that is, to make their body available to the paying party's lust".

That did not happen here, the judges said.