Berlusconi urged to attend clinic for sex addiction - Times Online
MEMBERS of Silvio Berlusconi’s entourage are urging the prime minister to seek treatment in a clinic for sex addiction.
The 72-year-old billionaire’s private life has been the focus of a long-running scandal since he attended the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia in April.
His wife, Veronica Lario, 53, has demanded a divorce and Patrizia D’Addario, a prostitute, has said she spent a night at Berlusconi’s Rome residence last November — which he has denied.
The Veronica Trend, an updated biography of Lario, a former
actress, to be published on Wednesday, tells her side of the story. It is based on interviews with the prime minister’s wife of 19 years.
The book’s author, Maria Latella, writes that a few members of Berlusconi’s inner circle are calling for the couple to separate formally, but then for Lario to “return to her husband’s side to help him find himself again ... also with a stay in one of those clinics specialising in curing sex dependence”.
“This scenario hasn’t been completely ruled out, and much will depend on how much the press — above all overseas — will continue to be fascinated by Berlusconi’s private life,” she writes.
Latella does not specify whether those backing this idea include Lario or any of the Berlusconi’s three children: Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi. A source said yesterday the clinic suggestion had been floated for the first time shortly before Berlusconi presided over the G8 summit at L’Aquila in July. It would involve a stay of one to two weeks.
But the book says the most realistic outcome, which the prime minister is understood to favour, is an uncontested divorce. Lario may then move from Milan to Switzerland, where she is building a house.
Over lunch in late April, Lario confided to Latella: “I think I have no choice but to separate.”
“Why don’t you talk, you and your husband?” asked Latella, who has known Lario for nearly two decades.
“I can’t. He would tell me yet another lie and this time I couldn’t stand it,” Lario replied. “I can’t condemn myself to being his wet nurse, and now I can’t stop him making himself look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.”
The previous Sunday afternoon, after a family lunch at her palatial Villa Macherio near Milan, Berlusconi told Lario: “I’ve got to go to Naples. I’ve got an important meeting on rubbish collection early tomorrow morning.”
“That was yet another lie,” said Lario. On the evening of his departure from the villa, Berlusconi attended Letizia’s birthday party.
“So it’s best to divorce. I don’t know where I get that conviction, that strength, from. In any case, he’s the one who’s reduced me to this. I could have gone on for years, but this way it’s impossible,” Lario said.
At the time, she made a virulent attack on Berlusconi, accusing him of consorting with underage girls. He has stated that he has never had an improper relationship with minors.
Lario, whom Berlusconi first courted after seeing her perform topless in The Magnificent Cuckold in a Milan theatre in 1980, is usually shy of the media spotlight. Since Berlusconi came to power in 2001, they have lived largely separate lives, with Lario ensconced in Villa Macherio.
In 2007 she demanded a public apology from her husband after he told Mara Carfagna, minister for equal opportunities and a former topless model, that if he was not married he would wed her on the spot. Berlusconi made the apology.
After Lario’s lawyer announced in May she was seeking a divorce, pro-Berlusconi papers published articles denigrating her. According to the book, this so incensed their eldest daughter, Barbara, 25, that she almost broke off relations with her father in a heated phone call.
That evening Berlusconi failed to turn up as expected for a gala dinner at an art gallery in Milan co-owned by Barbara. They have since been reconciled and Barbara stayed with her brother Luigi at Berlusconi’s villa on Sardinia’s Emerald Coast.
But Lario has stayed away from the estate. The couple are understood not to have seen or spoken to each other since the family lunch in late April.
Lario has lost none of her bitterness. “What I’m most sorry about is that a man like Silvio could have let himself down. He has done so much, he has conquered so much and today people talk about things that will make everyone forget what he really was,” Lario told her biographer last month.