An unnamed family from Malta, who, with other families from all over Italy, paid money to have their child treated in the Civico hospital in Palermo, has now found itself in the middle of a controversy in Italy.

Professor Carlo Marcelletti can be heard, on wiretaps carried out by Italian police, asking from between e2,000 to e3,000 to bypass regulations and get sick children into the hospital faster than the patient queue allowed.

The wiretaps covered the period between 29 July and 15 August last year.

The professor is also being charged with not revealing his professional relationship with the children he was bringing in to the hospital administrators.

However, it was while investigating the suspicion he was taking money to help people jump the queue that the wiretaps turned up something far worse that is now the talk of the town in an Italy haunted by paedophilia.

For the wiretaps turned up some 50 SMS messages between the professor and a 13-year old girl, the daughter of a close friend of the professor from Partinico in Sicily.

The SMSs exchanged between the professor and the girl show that on at least five occasions the girl sent him photos of a very intimate nature of her own body.

In most cases, it was the professor who asked for these specific pictures.

He then engaged in an erotic game with her and asked her to do certain things and describe what she was feeling.

All this happened while the professor was on holiday in Pantelleria. Searches on his hospital computer failed to turn up any other evidence of paedophilia but, based on what has been discovered so far, the fact remains the Maltese family who was ready to pay for the speedy recovery of their child in a hospital in Palermo had no idea the professor they were relying on so much could be a paedophile.