Rome police crack down on pedophilia ring preying on Gypsy children

(the Associated Press on www.iht.com)

Rome police on Monday broke up a pedophilia ring preying on children in Gypsy camps in the city, authorities said.

Twenty-eight suspects were arrested on charges of sexually abusing minors and four others were being sought on warrants, police told a news conference in the capital.

Police said social workers informed them that expensive gifts were circulating in the Gypsy camps, which are little more than shanty towns on Rome's outskirts, and that respectable-looking, professional, middle-aged men were visiting the camps in unusually large numbers.
Among those arrested were lawyers, doctors, teachers and an athletic coach, as well as parents of some of the children who allegedly allowed their offspring to be abused in return for the gifts, authorities said.

Family Policy Minister Rosy Bindi said the anti-pedophilia investigation "revealed that the crime is frequently interwoven in two worlds — on one side perpetrators without records, the so-called 'above suspicion' people with excellent social positions — on the other side very young victims" from extreme poverty impressed by the economic power of those who violate them.