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The verdict being read out today at a Lisbon court brings to an end the long-running scandal over a child prostitution racket involving young boys from the Casa Pia network of orphanages.

Clients included people from the country’s professional, government and media elites, according to trial evidence. Systematic sexual abuse involving orphanage employees was also revealed.

Newspaper websites and television stations provided live running coverage of this morning’s reading of what the Portuguese legal system calls the “proven facts” of a case that has shocked the country.

Carlos Cruz, a married TV presenter who was once voted Portugal’s most popular man, paid for sex with a 14-year-old, according to Expresso newspaper’s website. He also abused at least one other boy.

Cruz, a father of two, became known as “Mr Television” after several decades of presenting.

A former ambassador to Unesco, Jorge Ritto, and a doctor, Ferreira Diniz, were also deemed to have abused several young boys.

A former ombudsman at the Casa Pia orphanages, Manuel Abrantes, also sexually abused the children. Two more men and a woman were also found to have been involved in the paedophile ring.

During the trial, the court heard evidence of young boys being taken to a house in the eastern town of Elvas to meet the paedophile clients. Abuse had also taken place at various addresses in Lisbon.

Some of the 30 or more victims who gave evidence were reportedly present to hear the verdicts. Psychiatrists who have helped the victims said several had tried to kill themselves after denouncing the abuse to the police.

Lawyers had said before the verdicts were read out that their clients would almost certainly appeal against any guilty sentences. “It seems inevitable that we will have to appeal,” said Cruz’s lawyer, Antonio Serra Lopes. “This is the first round.”

It was not clear whether today’s reading of the “proven facts” would include sentencing. The court broke for lunch and was to resume the reading this afternoon.

One of the judges, Ana Peres, had earlier warned those present that the proven facts would be shocking. “Some of the accounts could be considered pornographic,” she said.

Portuguese media reported that the judges had decided to read an abbreviated version of the verdict, with a fuller version to be sent to defendants and prosecutors next week.

The court case has already dragged on for six years, and the first arrests were made eight years ago – though abuse had reportedly been continuous for more than three decades.

The Casa Pia scandal rocked the country’s political establishment after the former socialist Labour minister Paulo Pedroso was arrested in 2002. He was cleared four months later. Socialists claimed the allegations against Pedroso were politically motivated and a court later ordered the state to pay him damages for wrongful arrest.

A former senior government official also revealed that allegations of abuse at the orphanages had been presented to the country’s then president, General Ramalho Eanes, in the 1980s.

Former secretary of state for families Teresa Costa Macedo, who presented the evidence to Ramalho Eanes and sent a dossier to police that was later lost, said she received anonymous threats by phone and post.

“They said they would kill me, flay me and a lot of other things,” she said.