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RIGNANO Flaminio, a sleepy little town about an hour's drive from Rome, has not been the same since police burst into its model nursery school seven months ago seeking evidence of child abuse.
Many of its 7,000 residents fear it never will be. The arrest last month of three teachers - women in their fifties and each with at least 20 years' experience - horrified parents and has sparked lurid headlines about the "school of horrors."
Few Italians had hitherto heard of the moderately prosperous town, set in rolling hills, until the scandal at the Olga Rovere school, named best nursery school in the region in 1999.
Now the affair, which has yet to come to trial, has split the town between those who fiercely defend the teachers and those convinced they headed a pedophile ring which systematically abused up to 20 pupils aged three or four.
The prosecutors' allegations are chilling. They say children were regularly driven in small groups from the school to teachers' houses. There they were drugged and filmed while performing sex acts with adults, then driven back to the school.
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