“We will appeal,” stated Gameiro Fernandes to Lusa, arguing that the Local Criminal Court of Cascais aimed to “whitewash the actions of the social workers, the judge, and the prosecutor” who, in December 2015, removed the children from his client and placed them with their respective fathers.
According to the ruling dated October 17, 2025, accessed today by Lusa, the two social workers were accused of perjury and denial of justice and misconduct, but were acquitted of both charges.
In the decision, Judge Orlanda Marques argued that the two Social Security workers did not anticipate the possibility of providing false statements when, in 2015, they advocated before the Family Court in Cascais that the children were in danger and should be removed from their mother.
At the time, the social workers based their report on a statement from a staff member of the school attended by one of the girls in the Oeiras municipality, who informed them that the mother had shouted that the father would never see the daughters again.
The case gained attention after the children’s mother, then aged two and three, held a hunger strike of more than two weeks in June 2016 in front of the Assembly of the Republic and other institutions, protesting against the decision of the Family and Minors Court of Cascais to remove her daughters in December 2015 and hand them over to their father.
According to the October 17, 2025 sentence, at the time the children were taken, the man was accused of domestic violence.
Besides the two children from this relationship, another girl was also taken from the woman and given to her respective father at that time.
Initially, in May 2023, the two social workers were given a suspended sentence by the Local Criminal Court of Cascais for perjury and denial of justice and misconduct. In February 2024, the Lisbon Court of Appeal ordered a retrial, which has now resulted in the complete acquittal of the defendants.
The mother regained custody of one child in 2019 and the other two in 2021.
