The mother of the victim lived with the accused from June 2015 until April 2023 in a municipality of the Coimbra district, where two of the suspect’s children from another relationship and the woman’s daughter also resided.
The couple faces charges of 50 counts of child sexual abuse and 73 counts of sexual abuse of a dependent minor.
The accused is further charged with two counts of sexual abuse of a dependent minor related to his partner’s daughter, allegedly committed without the mother’s presence, and two counts of sexual abuse concerning the daughter of another woman with whom he formerly lived.
The couple is alleged to have committed the abuses throughout their cohabitation (the accused is currently in preventive detention), both while the minor resided with them and after she was placed in an institution in 2020. The crimes allegedly continued during the victim’s weekend or holiday visits home.
Initially, the minor was reportedly forced to witness the couple having sexual relations, eventually becoming a victim of sexual acts by her mother’s partner and her own mother in subsequent years.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) alleges that the accused told the victim she must “watch and do what he said” as a form of gratitude for “everything he had done for them and the money he provided,” threatening to leave the victim’s mother if his demands were not met.
The indictment by the MP states that the couple acted “in mutual agreement and in conjunction of efforts, executing a preconceived plan.”
The Public Prosecutor requests that the defendants also be sentenced to accessory penalties of prohibition from holding any profession involving regular contact with minors and from assuming guardianship, care, or custody of minors.
