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A judge has ordered a man convicted of paying for an underage prostitute to buy her feminist literature.

The 35-year-old man, who has not been named, was jailed for two years following an investigation into a paedophile ring.

But an Italian judge has also ordered him to buy his 15-year-old victim 30 feminist books and two feminist films in addition to serving his prison sentence.

The books include Anne Frank's Diary, Virginia Woolf novels and the poems of Emily Dickinson.

(Image: Getty)

Judge Paola Di Nicola reportedly said she hoped the books would help the teenage victim "understand the damage done to her dignity as a woman".

But one author, whose book was on the list, told a local newspaper in Rome that it would have been better if the judge had read the works to the convicted man instead.

Adriana Cavarero, author of Notwithstanding Plato and a distinguished philosophy professor at Verona University, said: “Adolescence is not the time for reflection.

(Image: Getty)

"What he did was much worse: an adult who knowingly paid for sex with a minor.”

The ruling follows a three-year investigation into a major paedophile ring in Rome that preyed on two underage girls.

The 14 and 15-year-old girls were lured into sex work with cash incentives they used to “buy new clothes and the latest mobile phones".

During the 2014 trial of the sex ring’s mastermind , who was jailed for nine years, a judge said the girls were “children who got carried away with the debauchery, without restraint, so they could easily earn money,” the Guardian reports.