KEY POINTS:
A school teacher in Italy has revealed that she works after hours as a web-based porn star.
Anna Ciriani teaches Italian in the north-eastern town of Pordenone and insists that in her work as a teacher she is a model of professionalism, who wears modest outfits and takes
her job seriously.
But now she has publicly admitted that, once she leaves the school gates, she becomes the virtual porn star Madameweb. Her hardcore videos are scattered across more than a dozen websites, and her professional life is at risk of becoming a lot more complicated.
The fact that the school has a star of the adult entertainment world in its midst has been well known for years. In 2002, some of Ciriani's students stumbled across some of her videos online, printed off hard copies of some of the pictures from the sites and papered the school lavatory with them.
Last month, she travelled to Germany for the 11th Venus-Berlin, an international pornography fair, where she proved a big hit. "Madameweb's extempore performance was one of the hottest moments at the fair," the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported on its website. She followed it up with a five-minute YouTube video in which she appeared completely naked on a bus, on a subway system and walking along a street.
Her reception in Germany did not go unnoticed back home in Pordenone. Her antics were reported by the local and regional press and, for the first time, another teacher expressed dissent. "What is to be said?" a male colleague, identifying himself only as Fabio, wrote on his blog. "Each of us, outside work and in our private life, is free to do what he or she wants, free to take whoever one wants to bed. What perplexes me is that Madameweb has a job in which, unfortunately, the private life matters - a lot. It matters for the families, it matters for the school."
He added: "When I meet Madameweb, who has always been very kind to me to the extent that some of my colleagues tease me about it, you would never imagine this is a person who has sex with 100 men at a time, without condoms."
Madameweb took the bait, responding with a furious self-defence. "My behaviour at school has always been extremely professional and upright," she declared, emphasising that her clothes were always modest in cut and her behaviour unprovocative.
"We teachers must first and foremost guarantee a good cultural preparation, as well as the growth and maturation of individuals. Values must be transmitted principally by parents. We cannot substitute for a mother or father and become a model for children to follow."
Revealing her real name online for the first time, she added: "It is true I am a schoolmistress but that doesn't mean that what I am in private must change what I am in school or vice-versa."
- INDEPENDENT
