'Guru' arrested in Sicily on child abuse allegations

The suspected leader of an isolated forest community on the Mediterranean island of Sicily has been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting child abuse, Italian news agencies ANSA and Adnkronos report.

The suspect is a man of German-Indian origin.

He is said to have led a community of 15 people, including two children, who lived in a forest near Cefalu on Sicily's northern coast.

The two children, aged seven and 11, were reportedly not vaccinated, did not attend school and had to stand guard around the house where they lived at night.

Media reports said they lived in the house in precarious hygienic conditions and without electricity.

Adnkronos quoted the public prosecutor's office as saying the environment was "characterised by forms of isolation and psychological conditioning".

The German-Indian man reportedly presented himself as the community's spiritual teacher.

The group consisted of Germans, Britons and an Italian woman.

He is said to have arrived in Sicily nearly 10 years ago and held several spiritual meetings there.

Media described him as a "guru".

He persuaded his followers to live in harmony with nature and in poverty, ANSA reported.

However, the man himself is said to have had a taste for luxury.

The public prosecutor's office in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese was tipped off by the father of one of the man's followers and the mother of one of the children, it said.

The man, a hotelier from Cefalù in northern Sicily, told authorities about manipulation his daughter had allegedly been subjected to by the community and about repeated cash withdrawals by the woman.

The two children were taken out of the community, ANSA reported.