Six people including three female teachers were arrested on Tuesday, accused of sexually abusing children as young as three at a school near Rome.
Police said the teachers at the joint nursery and primary Olga Rovere school in the small town of Rignano Flaminio had aided in the repeated abuse of some 15 children aged three and four, in some cases drugging them before forcing them to take part in sexual acts while filming them.
Two of the teachers, both grandmothers, were reported to have been in service at the school for decades and one is close to retirement.
Police also arrested a female caretaker at the school, a young Sri Lankan male and the husband of one of the teachers who formerly worked as a cameraman at state broadcaster RAI.
Police say the children were taken to an apartment near the school owned by one of the teachers where they were then made to perform sexual acts with the Sri Lankan suspect while the cameraman filmed them.
Children who protested or resisted were given sleeping pills, tranquilisers or other types of drugs, they said.
It is not known whether the suspects then sold the filmed material on the illegal porn market.
The six face a range of charges including kidnapping, indecently assaulting minors and group sexual assault.
Judicial sources said the investigation began last July after complaints were filed by several of the victims' parents.
The parents were reportedly alarmed by signs of bruising, as well as by the dazed and confused state in which some of them returned home from school.
When the parents questioned them about where they had seen such a person, the children told them about the house next to the school.
The teachers were suspended from work in February when they were placed under official investigation.
Education Minister Giuseppe Fioroni said the alleged crimes of the six suspects were "evil and beyond belief".
He said the teachers would be sacked as soon as magistrates had completed their investigation.
A noted children's rights organisation said it was particularly shocked that four of the suspects were women.
The parents, meanwhile, urged a swift investigation and trial.
One mother complained to reporters that the local school authorities had failed at first to take their suspicions seriously.
"They accused us of trying to ruin the lives of respectable people... The education minister only sent in the inspectors after we asked for it through an appeal. The school didn't think of it. And it took months for them to suspend the teachers," she said.
But a former teacher at the school, Pasqualina Pellegrino, said she could "swear on the innocence" of the teachers and the caretaker.
"I am sure of their innocence and have full trust in them because I've seen the way they were with the children," she said.
