The defendant, currently in preventive detention, has been convicted of 33 counts of aggravated child sexual abuse and two counts of child pornography.
The young man, who was arrested in September 2024 at the age of 22, has also been sentenced to a five-year ban on engaging in professions, employment, or activities, public or private, involving regular contact with minors.
For the same duration, the defendant is prohibited from taking custody of minors, whether through adoption, guardianship, fostering, civil sponsorship, or any related responsibility, and an additional accessory penalty mandates his expulsion from the country.
The panel of judges has also ordered the defendant to pay 20,000 euros to the victim, who was aged 9 and 10 at the time of the incidents and who testified in advance before a criminal instruction judge.
“The testimony before the criminal instruction judge is clear and devastating,” stated the presiding judge during the reading of the verdict, indicating that the victim described the events in detail.
The judge explained that the proven facts “are basically almost all those described in the prosecution” by the Public Prosecutor’s office and that they occurred over two periods, totaling about 16 months, during which the defendant took advantage of being the child’s brother and living in the same house.
Listing the types of sexual crimes against the minor, the presiding judge noted that the defendant “denied most of the facts during the trial, justifying them with the cultural differences between Portugal and Brazil,” which “makes no sense and does not correspond to reality.”
“In his statements, [the defendant] only admitted a very small part of the facts,” noted the presiding judge, emphasizing that the victim’s statements were “clear and consistent,” and the forensic examinations confirmed the existence of sexual acts.
The judge added that the court “had no doubts that the incidents occurred as reported by the victim, in the manner and frequency described.”
“These are very serious crimes, which are not justified by cultural differences. They are not lawful in Portugal, nor are they lawful in Brazil,” she declared.
In September 2024, the Judicial Police (PJ), through the Criminal Investigation Department of Leiria, announced the arrest of a young man, legally residing in the country and without a criminal record in Portugal, for the alleged commission of various child sexual abuse crimes, occurring in the Leiria area.
“The suspect took advantage of moments alone with the victim, his relative and cohabitant, subjecting her to significant sexual acts,” detailed the PJ, adding that the facts were reported to the authorities by the mother.
