ROME - Three of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's five children Thursday came to his defense over his links to a teenage aspiring model in their first public comments on the month-old scandal.

Opposition leader Dario Franceschini "has no right to insult Silvio Berlusconi. Who does he think he is? Doesn't he realize the seriousness of his accusations? He should be really ashamed!" Marina Berlusconi, 42, said in remarks to leading daily Corriere della Sera.

"I am indignant, furious," she said, adding: "That's enough now!"

The billionaire prime minister's eldest daughter from his first marriage was reacting to a rhetorical question posed by Franceschini on Wednesday at a campaign rally for European Union elections to be held June 6-7 in Italy.

"Italian men and women, would you have Berlusconi raise your children?" he asked.

The 72-year-old premier has come under constant pressure to clarify his relationship with Noemi Letizia, the 18-year-old at the centre of a highly public row between Berlusconi and his second wife Veronica Lario, who has filed for divorce.

"To insult my father is to insult me, as a woman and mother who passes on the values I learned from my parents to my children," said Marina Berlusconi, president of Fininvest, the holding company that controls her father's vast media empire Mediaset.

"This has nothing to do with freedom of speech, it's despicable."

Her younger brother and Mediaset vice president Pier Silvio, 40, chimed in, speaking to the ANSA news agency: "How could he say such a thing? Berlusconi's values are my values: love of work, generosity... respect for others, which Franceschini seems to forget."

For his part, the youngest offspring, 20-year-old Luigi from his marriage to Lario, asked: "How can politics judge Berlusconi as a father?"