Bodies of three sex workers found stabbed to death in two apartments in upmarket district of Prati
The Guardian
Police in Rome are hunting for a possible serial killer after the bodies of three women were found in two apartments in the upmarket district of Prati.
Two of the women, both sex workers of Chinese nationality believed to be aged between 40 and 50, were found stabbed to death in an apartment on Via Augusto Riboty.
The porter of the building raised the alarm after finding the body of one of the deceased women on the doorstep of the apartment on Thursday morning, while the other body was found inside.
The body of a Colombian woman, identified as Marta Castano Torres, also a sex worker who had been stabbed to death, was found by her sister in a basement apartment on a nearby street.
Stab wounds to the throat, chest and back were found on the bodies of the Chinese women, who are yet to be identified.
A source at Rome police said investigators were working on the theory that the women were murdered by the same person. Torres, 65, who the Italian press said was working as a sex worker to support her daughter financially, is believed to have been killed before the two other victims.
The killings occurred a few hundred metres from Italy’s supreme court, in an elegant neighbourhood where in recent years there has been a growth in criminal networks running prostitution businesses out of apartments.
To protect sex workers, calls have been made for prostitution to be regulated as a profession in Italy as a result of the killings. Street prostitution is legal in Italy, but organized prostitution and brothels are prohibited.
Ermina Gbido from the Committee for the Civil Rights of Prostitutes, a non-profit group started by sex workers in 1982 to combat sex trafficking and support those in the industry, said “These murders are horrific.”
The management of sex workers in apartments by criminal networks, who exploit them and force them to move from apartment to apartment while working long hours, is undoubtedly a problem. This is a bad situation. However, we also need to be aware that some people want to do this work but are unable to do so because social norms forbid it.
The far-right party of the prime minister, Brothers of Italy, Federico Rocca, a councilor in Rome, claimed that the prostitution industry in apartments was deeply ingrained in “every district of the city.”
He told the Italian media that “three people lost their lives, brutally killed by a potential client.” There is sadness over their fate and anger at the same time because, once again, we had to wait for something significant to happen in order to break down the wall of hypocrisy surrounding the phenomenon of prostitution in apartments. We must wait for the results of the investigation.
