Now and then, a story surfaces that reminds us of all the glamour and grifting of Italy’s proto-Trump – the late Silvio Berlusconi – and his penchant for 16-and-17-year old girls.

This week, it came to light that one of the very few people convicted of participating in Berlusconi’s 2010 “bunga bunga” sex parties had been granted a pardon by the Italian President, Sergio Mattarella. The President has a non-political role.

Berlusconi was convicted in 2013 of paying for sex with a 17-year-old woman at one of these parties. The young woman went by the assumed name of Ruby Heart-Stealer.

While the age of consent in Italy is 16, it is an offence to pay for sex with a person under the age of 18. Berlusconi was acquitted on appeal in 2014, when many of the young women witnesses who had been present at the parties could not recall what happened.

Berlusconi was later charged with bribing these young women. The young women couldn’t remember that happening either, and Berlusconi was acquitted of that as well.

Nicole Minetti was one of the older women at the bunga bunga parties, being aged 24 in 2010.

In 2013, she was convicted of aiding and abetting prostitution associated with Berlusconi’s parties. The Prime Minister regarded her as one of his favourites.

As he did for other favoured young women, Berlusconi organised for her to become a member of the regional parliament of Lombardy. This did not go well. In 2021, she was convicted of fraudulently obtaining payments of €19,000 while sitting as an MP.

The years passed with many appeals and adjournments.

Ms Minetti faced a total sentence of three-years-and-11 months imprisonment. In Italy, under a bipartisan law, anyone with a sentence of less than four years may apply to the courts to serve that sentence by undertaking community service rather than going to prison.

Her lawyers took a different path, and applied for a pardon on the humanitarian grounds that she had the care of an ill child; that at 41 she was no longer the young and reckless woman of 2010; that she had repaid the €19,000; that she was likely to be eligible to undertake community service instead of going to prison but this could interfere with her responsibilities to care for the child; and that she had been rehabilitated.

The Italian Constitution provides that the Italian President “may grant pardons and commute punishments”. For a dramatisation of this role, there is the excellent 2025 Italian film La Grazia (The Pardon) in which a fictional President considers two applications for a pardon or commutation of sentences.

The pardon extinguishes Ms Minetti’s sentence of imprisonment but does not cancel the facts of her conviction or her guilt of the offences.

The pardon power also reflects the requirement in Article 27 of the Italian Constitution that punishments should aim at re-educating the convicted.