Portugal child sex abuse 'proved'

3 September 2010 Last updated at 12:09 GMT

Portugal child sex abuse 'proved'

Railings outside the Casa Pia college of Pina Manique in Lisbon (1 September 2010)Abuse at Casa Pia is said to have started in the mid-1970s, but was not discovered until 2002

Seven defendants in a paedophilia trial in Portugal have been found guilty of sexually abusing children in the care of a network of state-run homes.

The six men and one woman include Carlos Cruz, a former TV presenter, and Jorge Ritto, a former ambassador.

Between them they had been accused of hundreds of charges over the rape and abuse of 32 boys in the 1990s.

The boys, now aged between 16 and 22, were all in the resident at the Casa Pia children's home in Lisbon.

The judges in the case are still reading the full verdict in each of the hundreds of accusations, but the court has ruled that the vast majority of sexual abuse has been proven.

The main suspect was a former driver from Casa Pia, whom the court has found abused boys on hundreds of occasions.

He then began offering them to men, including Cruz, for cash.

Cruz has dismissed the verdict as a "mistake" and the result of "a vendetta".

"This is one of the most monstrous judicial mistakes in Portuguese history," he said.

Horrific injuries

The case is one of the longest-running in Portuguese history, lasting more than five years, with testimony from hundreds of people.

During the trial, the 32 victims, now aged between 16 and 22 years old, gave gruesome testimony about being raped by adults in dark cellars, cars and secluded houses.

One of the victims, now in his early 20s, was so seriously abused that he is now incontinent.

Almost all of them identified their abusers by pointing them out in the courtroom.

However, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Lisbon says it is thought that there may be many other victims who are still too frightened to speak out.

The alleged abuse at Casa Pia is said to have started in the mid-1970s, but was not discovered until 2002, when the mother of a boy place at one of the state-run homes in Lisbon said he had been abused by staff there.

Casa Pia is 230-year old institution which cares for about 4,500 need children through a network of 10 homes.