(www.canada.com)
The teenage Moroccan model at the heart of a sex scandal in Italy said Friday she was "sorry" for the trouble she has caused, as Silvio Berlusconi faced calls for his resignation.
Karima Keyek, 17, previously identified only by her stage name "Ruby", said she "felt bad" over the affair and had removed herself from Facebook, where she had called herself Ruby Rubacuore - Ruby the Heartbreaker.
"I'm sorry for everything that has happened," she said from a women's shelter in Genoa. "Above all I'm sorry because I've involved people who just wanted to help me and never asked for anything in return."
The girl ran away from home in her early teens and is understood to have worked as a belly dancer and waitress as she tried to break into television.
In an affair the Italian press has dubbed "Rubygate", she is reported to have attended dinners at Mr Berlusconi's villa outside Milan, where she allegedly witnessed group sex games that the prime minister and his entourage nicknamed "bunga-bunga" parties.
Her lawyer, Luca Giuliante, said: "She needs to be left alone because she is a very young girl involved in an affair that is much bigger than her."
Mr Berlusconi, 74, was accused of a gross abuse of power after officials in Milan confirmed they had received a call from his office in Rome on May 27 when Karima was being questioned about an alleged theft. Mr Berlusconi appeared to confirm the claim, saying: "I'm a kind-hearted person. I like to give help to people who are in need of it."
Opposition MPs said that in any other Western democracy, such an interference in the judicial process would have forced a leader to step down.
Mr Berlusconi's lawyers have strongly denied any suggestion that he had sexual relations with the teenager
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