The couple, accused of 135 crimes of sexual abuse of their daughter, began to be tried behind closed doors in Leiria.

This Monday, the couple’s trial began behind closed doors in Leiria Court for 135 crimes of sexual abuse of a minor allegedly committed against their daughter between 2012/13 and 2021.

The decision to close the trial to the public, including journalists, is due to the nature of the offenses, which dictated the ban on advertising.

The man and woman were arrested in September 2022 by the judicial police and have been awaiting trial in pre-trial detention ever since.

Both of them are charged by the Prosecutor’s Office (MP) with 36 crimes of sexual abuse of a minor under aggravating circumstances and 99 crimes of sexual abuse of a dependent minor, moreover, crimes in the form of committing due to the mother’s inaction.

In the dispatch, the deputy said that between 2012/2013 and 2021 “in the home of the victim and her parents” she was “repeatedly sexually abused in different circumstances and places by her father” and “with the consent and contribution of his mother”.

According to the deputy, when the minor was between 7/8 and 12 years old, the facts took place in another country, and between the ages of 12 and 16, in the municipality of Peniche.

The deputy claimed that when she was about 7 or 8 years old, her father “began to caress the genital area”, which happened “when he went to say goodbye to his parents in their bed at night.”

Recognizing that it was “impossible to spend the number of times” that this happened, the deputy considered that “it almost always happened on weekends, because there was more time,” because on weekdays the offended went to bed earlier.

“Sexual violence was witnessed by his mother (…) almost from the very beginning, the latter did nothing to protect her,” the indictment says, which says that no criminal proceedings were initiated in the foreign country where the family lived case. .

Claiming that “over time the type of sexual abuse committed” by the father “aggravated”, the deputy said that already in Portugal “sexual abuse took place in his parents’ room, in the common house”, as well as in bed and in the presence of the mother of a minor.

“Usually the accused (…) said nothing”, but when the victim “got older, he said that this was to prepare her for the future life and that he was teaching her.”

Among other aspects listed in the document, the deputy explained that one day the father called his daughter, in 2005 he had sex with his daughter.

The victim, who ended up filing a complaint, even asked her mother to talk to her father to end the situation by talking to him “and told him she didn’t want to continue because she felt bad about it.”

According to the deputy, all the facts occurred between the ages of 7/8 and 16 years of the victim at least once a week.

The deputy added that in May 2022, the victim spoke to her mother, “telling her that she would file a criminal complaint” against her father, fearing that “he would do the same” with her sister, also a minor, whom her mother asked not to do this, “trying to dissuade the daughter with arguments, including those related to financial dependence.”

Back in May, a minor recorded on her mobile phone a conversation with her mother, in which she asked her “why she didn’t defend her all these years and why she never filed a complaint against her father”, apologizing with the latter, suggested that he was wrong and that with the other daughter he would “do differently.”