‘Prison was hellish’

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 9

‘Prison was hellish’

NZPA London The movie star, Sophia Loren, who went to jail in Italy last May for 17 days for tax evasion, has described her sentence in a magazine interview as a “hellish and shocking experience.” Contrary to some press, reports at the time, which claimed that she was accorded special treatment at the women’s prison at Caserta near her home town in Naples, the 47-year-old actress said in the interview in "Woman’s Own” that she received no special privileges.

Miss Loren was sentenced by an Italian court in 1980, but avoided going to jail until she was arrested at Rome’s Leonardo de Vinci airport after flying there from Switzerland, where she and her husband Carlo Ponti live.

She was quoted as saying at the time that she had returned to Italy, despite the jail term she knew awaited her, to “see my mother, my country and my roots.” She was taken to jail amid a world-wide blaze of publicity, but denied it was a publicity stunt for a new movie.

Miss Loren said that the things she missed most during her time in prison were her children and sleep. But she said that she refused to take sleeping pills and came out “on the verge of collapse.” She recovered after being fed intravenously. But she said that she still suffered a huge pulse rate, a condition which started as soon as she entered prison.