Johannesburg — A FORMER Portuguese ambassador to South Africa, Jorge Ritto, has been implicated in a decades-long child-sex scandal at one of Lisbon's most famous orphanages that is said to involve several other senior diplomats, politicians and media personalities.

Photos of senior government officials with boys from the Casa Pia orphanage are reportedly with the police, who this week arrested a former orphanage employee, Carlos Silvino, who allegedly abused boys himself and procured them for powerful clients.

Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio promised an exhaustive investigation after a local television station and a newspaper revealed that more than 100 boys claimed to have suffered abuse, including homosexual rape and paedophile prostitution, since the 1970s.

What has most shocked the Portuguese is a claim by a former Secretary of State for Families, Teresa Costa Macedo, that she first reported the alleged paedophile ring in 1980, but authorities failed to act.

Politicians have expressed concern about a "monstrous cover-up". General Ramalho Eanes, president from 1976 to 1986, and former Social Affairs Minister Carlos Macedo were allegedly among those who knew of the abuse but failed to stop it. Both have denied any knowledge of the case.

Police said that they had no trace of Costa Macedo's reports, but on Tuesday she handed investigators copies of her original 1980 and 1982 reports.

Ritto, ambassador to SA in the early 1990s, was among those named by TV and newspapers this week. - Sunday Times Foreign Desk