INDIANAPOLIS -- Nine former workers at the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center have been charged with having sex with teenage female detainees between 2000 and 2005.

Also, the center's superintendent is charged with neglect of a dependent and obstruction of justice for allegedly failing for six years to report the rape of a girl housed at the center on Indianapolis' northeast side.

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said Monday that authorities know of six teenage detainees -- ages 13 to 15 -- who had sex with male employees at the facility between 2000 and 2005. The ex-employees -- eight guards and one control booth operator -- face counts of child molestation, sexual battery or sexual misconduct with a minor, among other charges.

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Video: Ex-Guards Charged With Having Sex With Juvenile Detainees

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Brizzi said the charges came after a five-month investigation. He said the guards wooed the girls with love letters and gifts, including a teddy bear emblazoned with the words "I Love You."

"Basically, we had a situation where we have very vulnerable females -- females that are incarcerated, females that don't have any stable home life -- that were being groomed by these youth services managers for sex," Brizzi said.

Brizzi said the superintendent, Damon Ellison, knew six years ago that at least two of the alleged victims had been molested, but did nothing to stop it.

Ellison has been suspended without pay. Brizzi said Ellison learned in early 2000 that a 13-year-old girl claimed one of the center's guards raped her. Ellison interviewed the girl -- then housed at the Indiana Girls' School -- and taped her description of the attack, Brizzi said.

But Ellison, 57, never reported the girl's claims and kept the tape of the interview in his work desk, where investigators found it earlier this year while executing a search warrant, Brizzi said.

The investigation began when one of the alleged victims' mothers contacted authorities to report her daughter had sexual contact with one of the guards.

Five of the guards were arrested by Monday afternoon. They were Wayne Vaughn, Tony H. Martin Jr., Merit McKinnie, Anthony Tyler and Frank Hunt.

Arrest warrants were issued for Ellison and the four other guards: Donnorris Harvey, Kelly Stewart, Bobby Clayton and Kevin Patterson.