High-profile Portugal child sex abuse 'proved'

defendants in a child sex trial in Portugal have been found guilty of abusing children in the care of a state-run home.

From BBC News

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

Between them they faced hundreds of charges relating to the rape and abuse of 32 boys in the 1990s.

The boys, now aged between 16 and 22, were all residents 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 found had abused boys on hundreds of occasions.

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

Horrific injuries
Pedro Namora, a former Casa Pia resident now in his forties, hailed the result, saying: "I hope this day will allow us to show the country that the boys have told the truth from the start."


The seven convicted of abuse include Portuguese TV presenter Carlos Cruz
However, 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.

The three judges in the case are expected to take turns reading out a summary of the verdict, which is reported to run to several thousand pages.

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 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 placed at a state-run home in Lisbon said he had been abused by staff there.


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