The rape of a woman by a Portuguese man in New Bedford 40 years ago resulted in the Portuguese being sent back to Portugal instead of being praised, said the president of the local Immigrant Help Center.
“Go away, go to your country” are the lines Helena DaSilva Hughes remembers when she witnessed the magnitude of the aftermath of the rape of a Portuguese-American woman by several Portuguese men in 1983 at a Big Dan’s bar.
The following year, he joined the center he now runs, set up in 1971 to help the Portuguese who emigrated there, mostly from the Azores and Madeira.
“When this incident happened and was reported, it was on page seven but quickly made it to the front page” of newspapers, Madeiran told Lusa.
And he said that this case changed the image of this Portuguese community – the largest in the United States – and that before that it was a hardworking people with immaculate homes, which all bosses aspired to.
“It was an integrated and engaged community that came here to work and improve their lives, who had children who studied and who had plans for the future,” he said.
When the rape occurred, the media exposed the perpetrators as Portuguese, and since then the American public has emerged ready to blame the entire community.
“Automatically, the whole community began to be condemned. And that was the biggest mistake and the biggest injustice,” he said.
“The rape was committed not only by four men, the entire Portuguese community was in the dock,” he continued, recalling that before that “there were no conflicts.”
It was, he said, a time of persecution of immigrants, in this case the Portuguese, when the Donald Trump administration was resurrected as the former US president “gave room for people who were racist and anti-immigrant to come out.”
Under Trump, he heard the same phrases that were addressed to the Portuguese 40 years ago, and now to citizens of other nationalities, as the Portuguese quickly “managed to survive the sad event.”
But, he adds, it was a “black mark” at the heart of this community, a “big mark”.
Four decades later, and in connection with a recent Netflix documentary on the subject, Helena DaSilva Hughes laments that the message that accompanies images of Portuguese demonstrations during the perpetrators’ trial continues to give the impression that the Portuguese were against the victim.
“The struggle, the protest was against the way the Portuguese are judged, accused, discriminated against. We did not agree with the violators, what they did was a crime, but we did not have to pay everyone for it, just because we are Portuguese, ”he said.
“I came from Madeira when I was 10 years old. First my father came, then my mother with seven children. The family came to provide the children with better conditions. We worked, we have houses, children, grandchildren. said.
And he regrets that once again the Netflix documentary presents the Portuguese community criticizing the decision of the perpetrators, when he only wanted to protest the community’s decision.
However, he knows that some people ended up criticizing the rape victim because she was the one who initiated the case. But she was a victim, he added, along with all the other Portuguese tried by the Americans.
The magnitude of the case is illustrated by the fact that even today there are women who do not go to the local women’s center because during the trial they supported Cheryl Araujo, a Portuguese-American woman who was raped.
“Unfortunately, the idea that victim support should be directed against the Portuguese has passed,” he said.
At the center of this hurricane was the fact that Big Dan’s trial was the first to be televised.
Despite the precautions set earlier to protect the identity of the victim, Cheryl spoke her name during the oath, thereby revealing it to the entire world, who followed the trial like a soap opera.
He died three years after the rape, in Miami, where he fled from the pressure that fell upon him.