ROME -- Rome police have arrested ten members of staff from a rehabilitation centre on charges of abusing young disabled residents, with one teacher being sent to prison, police sources say.

 The victims all suffered from serious psychiatric and motor-neurone diseases, five out of 16 of them under the age of 14 and some only eight years old. Footage from video cameras installed in the centre has shown the teachers and assistants hitting, smacking, bruising and force-feeding the victims as well as subjecting them to persistent humiliation, insults and threats.

 All the incidences took place at the neuropsychiatric rehabilitation centre 'Eugenio Litta' in Grottaferrata in Rome, well known in the area. Of the ten people arrested one was sent to prison for locking up three different patients in their respective rooms and preventing them from moving around. The other nine arrested will be issued with suspension letters, whilst another five of the centre's staff are under investigation but are suspected of being involved in only one case of abuse.

 The main people involved in the case were a professional teacher and a socio-sanitary assistant, both of whom had shown particularly violent and authoritative behaviour, creating a climate of fear amongst the young residents and encouraging similar behaviour amongst staff.

 The prosecutor, Francesco Prete, underlined that the cases were not isolated incidents but a "real and proper routine," a "repressive custom" which became a "model of treatment" for an extended period of time. Numerous episodes of mistreatment were carried out on the disabled patients, he said.

 'Eugenio Litta' director Michele Bellomo commented that all those involved in the arrests "were experienced people, even close to retirement. One of them had been here for some years. They are not however people that were hired by me, as I have only been here for around a year. Why did they do it? I do not know what to say, I cannot say anything."

 He admitted that one teacher had been arrested and then released in October last year "because we found him sleeping at night having locked a boy in his room."

 Health minister Beatrice Lorenzin has said she hoped for the approval of the planning of a new law to increase by a third the sentence for the mistreatment of more fragile people.